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I'm on a roll today so let's do this. This will be a review on Deerskin by Robin McKinley. Warnings for the review and the book: rape, incest, blood, illness, death (not main characters). There are some parts of this books that are very difficult to read, not only because of the rape itself but also the oppresive and tense environment that surrounds the main character before and after it. From my POV (I've not been raped or sexually assaulted), the author deals with the matter in a sensible and researched manner, but that's just my opinion. Be careful.Â
While I think the treatment of the rape is respectful and I think that we need books dealing with this topic in a "correct" way (without romanticizing it or trivializing it), I would not recommend this book. It's a delicate topic so I will explain below the spoiler section.Â
A brief summary: (I did not like the Goodread's summary so I'm gonna try it myself)
Princess Lissla Lissar has always been in the shadow of her parent's devotion to each other. They are the stuff of legend and she pales in comparison. All that changes when her mother dies after leaving behind a portrait and a condition about her husband's future bride that will bring horrible consequences to Lissar. She is brought to the spotlight in the most terrorific way.Â
But not all is lost. She has her will, her beloved and beautiful dog, Ash, and someone who is willing to protect her and give her time to heal.Â
So yeah, it's been a long time since I've written anything here and I'll try from now on to at least write a post per week. Btw, NaNo was great for advancing my story but in no way did I finish, either the story nor the NaNo. Some other time perhaps.Â
Things that I want to do related to this blog:Â
- Review the books that I finished last year: Deerskin by Robin McKinley, The Circle by Sara Elfgren and Mats Stranberg, His Majesty's Dragon and The Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik, and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.Â
- Make the list of all the books meant to diversificate my reading, edition 2014. With a note if I rec it or not and related works that I'm interested in reading and are included in my neverending list of to-read.Â
- Review the books that I've read in January: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Why does he do that? by Lundy Bancroft.Â
Yep.Â
So yes I'm doing NaNo. Well, a light version of it. I'm continuing my current project (because I need to finish it) and I'm only writing 1000 words per day. So 30k by the end of the month, hopefully. First time doing it, I figured I'd start easy, even though 1k per day doesn't seem easy anymore XD
Yessssssss, finally, I've finished The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova! I'm gonna comment on it, but I don't think that this should be the basis for anyone to read it. I think I didn't start this book at the correct time. It seemed so unnecessarily long. It is the exact opposite of what happened with Then We Came to the End, which is first person plural POV (all of it) and almost no-action and I completely loved it. When I was reading it, I thought "wow, we just are meant to be" because I've happened to have read before or after that moment, I wouldn't've loved it so much. Sometimes you just get hooked on a novel because you're in the right place, right time and with The Historian I was in the wrong place, wrong time.Â
Summary:Â Late one night, exploring her fatherâs library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters addressed ominously to âMy dear and unfortunate successorâ. Her discovery plunges her into a world she never dreamed of â a labyrinth where the secrets of her fatherâs past and her motherâs mysterious fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history. (Link to Goodreads)

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So I've been thinking of participating in the NaNoWriMo this November. I mean, I would have to have finished my second first draft by then and I don't know if it's like physically possible. I have hope because there is just little incident and big incident left to happen, and I had vacations from work for these coming two weeks, so hopefully. It'd be perfect because 1) time for my current draft to rest and return of my hability to see it with fresh eyes 2) I'd have another draft completely done 3) I'd be doing NaNo which is something that I've always wanted to do.Â
This year is perfect because I'm not studying which leaves me actual time to write and my job is not very demanding mentally. Next year, if all goes well, I'll be studying again so no NaNo and I don't what life situation I will have next. So yeah, this year is the year.Â
In other news, I'm reading this book that I'm starting to hate: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's an OK story, but it's so loooooooong. Like in the author's bio says that she has been researching this book for ten years and it's like she needs you to know that so she describes everything and explains everything and it's so loooooong. So why do I keep reading? Why do I do this to myself if I'm not enjoying? Because it's almost 900 pages long and I'm in 750, I cannot stop now. All the effort would be for nothing. I just thought it'd get more interesting, but I was wrong.Â
This year I've read 75 books :D It's a new record!
This review will be about The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. I have to say that I read these books when I was a teen and they had a great impact on me. It was the first story that made me really care about the ending, in the sense that I really felt it.Â
A very brief summary:Â
The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye and Ptolemy's Gate are set mainly in an alternative present-day London. They follow Bart's relationships with his young master, Nathaniel, and with Kitty, a fiery member of the Resistance against the magicians. X
While I try and I do write every day, I don't pressure myself to write a minimum of time or words. I find that some days I spend all the words inside me in a few hours and other days I have not enough time to write everything I want to. I try not to feel bad in either of these days.Â
When I don't know how to write a scene, I leave it for the next day. With the habit of working every day, I find that I come up with better things than I'd've come up with if I had forced myself to finish the scene that day.Â
I got the Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley for my birthday and I have recently read it. I liked it very much; it's a very sweet and fun story.Â
Here is the summary:Â
"When you sell a man a book," says Roger Mifflin, the sprite-like book peddler at the center of this classic novella, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glueâyou sell him a whole new life." In this beguiling but little-known prequel to Christopher Morley's beloved Haunted Bookshop, the "whole new life" that the traveling bookman delivers to Helen McGill, the narrator of Parnassus on Wheels, provides the romantic comedy that drives this charming love letter to a life in books. X

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The last book I've read is The Heart of Aces that consists in eleven short stories about asexual characters and relationships. Being asexual myself, I really, really enjoyed this book, but obviously everyone can like and love it, too. It's great!Â
Here is the summary:Â
The heart of aces is where an anomaly lives, where loveâs definition takes a deviation from the common rules. These eleven stories dive into asexual relationships, where couples embrace differences, defy societyâs expectations, and find romantic love. In this collection is a full spectrum of asexuality in all its classifications. From contemporary fiction to fantasy, from heteroromantic to homoromantic, join these unique characters on their journey to finding the person that speaks to their hearts. X
I've read Kea's Flight by Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker. I really, really like it and I would totally recommend it :D Here is the summary from amazon (where it is really cheap in the Kindle format):Â
It's the 25th century, and humans have learned how to end unwanted pregnancies by removing and cryogenically freezing the embryos to save for later. But they never planned for how many there would be, or how much control people would want over their offspring's genetic makeup. Kea was an exile before she was born. Grown from an embryo that was rejected for having autism-spectrum genes, she has been raised on a starship full of Earth's unwanted children. When a sudden discovery threatens their plan to find a home, Kea must join with other rejects to save the ship from its own insane government. X
Some very light spoilers in the review:Â
So I've read This is not a Test by Courtney Summers in a few hours. It's amazing and I would definitely recommend it. Also, it was the first novel that I read in the Kindle format and it was a really great experience. It read very well.Â
Here is the summary:Â
Itâs the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside wonât stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesnât sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, sheâs failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, sheâs forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the groupâs fate is determined less and less by whatâs happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for lifeâand deathâinside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to? X
I'm trying to read at least one book by a Spanish author in Spanish and at least one in Catalan by a Catalan author. I chose Matilde Asensi's El salĂłn de ĂĄmbar this year. The title in English is Checkmate in Amber which I find hilarious because I thought that only in Spain we made unneeded changes to titles. The original could be translated to "The Amber Living Room" easily.  I really, really liked it and I'm definitely going to read more books by this author.Â
This is the summary:Â
A group of antiquarians are dealing in stolen works of art. The group is hierarchically organized and its members represent the chess pieces. The King (the eldest team member) leads every operation and the Pawn (the main character of the novel) carries out the orders. Ana Galdeanoâs next job is finding a unique and exceptional piece, stolen by the Nazi army, which mysteriously disappeared during the final days of World War II. This object is the Amber Salon, an 18th-century room constructed entirely of semitransparent amber from the Baltic. In seeking this magnificent object, Ana finds herself obliged to disentangle the threads of a conspiracy plotted 50 years earlier by two very dangerous Nazi officials. Â X
Here is my weekly recound plus some of my worries about the length of the story:Â
This week was really good. I'm not getting stuck on particular scenes, only in lines or how to phrase certain things but that's completely normal and not as time consuming.Â
I always worry about the length that it's gonna be. I don't want it to be too short. Which shouldn't be a problem because if I show everything that I want to show the shorter the better. But at every school and university I've been there's been this pressure of having to write a lot because if you don't it means you aren't doing well in the exam/paper/so on. I'm always very brief and I finish very quicly in exams. So I worry constantly about doing well because I write less than other people. I have learned to not care about it and just go on, but sometimes I still worry a bit.Â

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So I read Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I did not like it. This review will not be positive and I would not recommend it to anybody. Warnings: mentions of rape and victim blaming.Â
First, the part that I liked: the structure. The authors use diverse mediums to tell their story. There are journal's entries, sections of ficticious books, interviews and so on, which for me make the story more interesting and engaging. You see different points of view from different people. It works.Â
The second thing is Dr. Manhattan at the beginning. I liked the questions that such a being would bring up. Like if he can literally do anything, what's the point of the other masked heroes? How would people react to him? What changes would he bring in science and religion and so on? However, the authors don't develop fully these parts and center more about him as a super being, which I don't have any interest, especially in such a dark and pessimistic story.Â
I found this comic very sexist, even misogynistic. I was enjoying it until it became evident that this wasn't a parody or a denounce of it. It was just simply the same tired stereotypes. And the rape was handled so poorly and it is such a delicate matter. Of all the ways you can talk about it, the authors decided on the victim after being almost raped wanting to have sex with her rapist and then having a child that results of it. On her thinking that maybe she did something to deserve it. On her blaming herself for wanting to continue a relationship with him. On him being the kind of  person that is respected by the majority of characters and that the story focuses a lot on. It's disgusting.Â
Also, apart from that, rape is treated as a plot point. The characters mention cases of it to add darkness in the story and there are a lot of cases. They don't go deeper into it, it's just to add drama. A similar case happens with sex work, only that the treatment of sex workers in this story is truly awful and disrespectful.Â
I could go on but I'm very tired of always reading the same sexist bullshit that they are feeding the audience. I didn't find it original or deep. Just the same story, with different characters.Â