Vouchers, Reviewing and Writing

Vouchers
Bookdepository is giving away -10% vouchers that we can share with friends, so if you want one, just fill in the form below - I'll send you one.





Reviewing
A few days ago The Undercover Book Lover (Not Really) posted about an article about the top 20 most annoying book reviewer cliches and how to use them all in one meaningless review. It's a very interesting article, and some of those clichés do make me think of reviews right away. I'm even guilty of some of them.

Here is the list:

1. Gripping

2. Poignant: if anything at all sad happens in the book, it will be described as poignant

3. Compelling

4. Nuanced: in reviewerspeak, this means, "The writing in the book is really great. I just can't come up with the specific words to explain why."

5. Lyrical: see definition of nuanced, above.

6. Tour de force

7. Readable

8. Haunting

9. Deceptively simple: as in, "deceptively simple prose"

10. Rollicking: a favorite for reviewers when writing about comedy/adventure books

11. Fully realized

12. At once: as in, "Michael Connelly's The Brass Verdict is at once a compelling mystery and a gripping thriller." See, I just used three of the most annoying clichés without any visible effort. Piece of cake.

13. Timely

14. " X meets X meets X": as in, "Stephen King meets Charles Dickens meets Agatha Christie in this haunting yet rollicking mystery."

15. Page-turner

16. Sweeping: almost exclusively reserved for books with more than 300 pages

17. That said: as in, "Stephenie Meyer couldn't identify quality writing with a compass and a trained guide; that said, Twilight is a harmless read."

18. Riveting

19. Unflinching: used to describe books that have any number of unpleasant occurences -- rape, war, infidelity, death of a child, etc.

20. Powerful

The prize of the competition

Writing
The final item of this post is about writing, my own writing. Juliet Marillier Café and Mundo Mariller, together with the author Juliet Marillier held a creative writing competition to win a copy of her new book, Seer of Sevenwaters (that I'm anxiously waiting for).

I participated on JM Café, with a prose text. Unfortunately I didn't win. If you are curious about my piece, you can read it here.

One Lovely Blog Award

One Lovely Blog Award

Kah Woei from The Books of my Life has awarded me with One Lovely Blog Award. Thank You so much!!!

The Rules:

• Accept the award, post in on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
• Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.
• Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know that they have been chosen for this award.

15 blogs that I've recently discovered:

1. 5 Line Reviews
2. All Booked Up
3. Bookworming in the 21st Century
4. Cuidado com o Dálmata
5. Daisy Chains Book Reviews
6. Ex Libris
7. In Which a Girl Reads
8. My Fluttering Heart
9. Page Turners
10. Queen of Happy Ending
11. Reading Teen
12. Reading with Tequila
13. Red House Books
14. Speculative Horizons
15. There's a Book

I write like...

I write like David Foster Wallace

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

So, I found this on a Library Thing topic: it analyses your text and, based on the words you use and the writing style, it tells you which author's your writing resembles.

I ran it through 14 reviews and this is what I got:

• David Foster Wallace - 4
• Vladimir Nabokov - 2
• Jonathan Swift - 2
• Dan Brown - 2
• Mary Shelley - 1
• James Joyce - 1
• Charles Dickens - 1
• Kurt Vonnegut - 1

I also ran it through some original texts and I ended up with:
(The results are ordered by age of the texts, older ones first)

• Dan Brown (I really need to revise this one :S)
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Anne Rice
• David Foster Wallace 

Now, I never heard of David Foster Wallace, or read anything by him, but after this I will probably try it.

You can try it for your writing here.

Actors to play Juliet Marillier's Characters

On a discussion on Juliet Marillier Oficial FB fanpage many actors were suggested to play the different characters.

Here is a summary of what has been suggested. Comment if anything is missing or to suggest more.

Sevenwaters Series
Saga of the Light Isles
The Bridei Chronicles
Wildwood
Heart's Blood




EDIT: Nerwen Elendil has created an website for this, with galleries for each book with the actors suggested here. Go see it!

EDIT 2: Actors in need of role here.

EDIT 3: Another blog has been created to vote in the characters: Casting Sevenwaters. It's slowly coming live. The characters in this blog which name is a link, direct to the voting page.