Bookboy.net is not set up quite how I want it yet, but it’s close enough to move into. So consider this a farewell to the old bookboy.
Shortly after posting this, I will switch my RSS feed to the new blog and publish a post called “Welcome to the new home of bookboy”. If you are a subscriber and you don’t get that message, just pop over to bookboy.net and re-subscribe.
See you there.
Sometime in the next week or so bookboy will be moving house.
The new home will be bookboy.net and it will be a self-hosted blog, rather than the wordpress.com hosted blog you are currently reading.
The main reasons for this are:
The impact on readers should be minimal, but there are a few things to note:
I plan to make the move sometime next weekend so stay tuned. In the meantime, feel free to pop over to bookboy.net and see what’s happening. Bits and pieces may change over the week as I tinker, fiddle, experiment, break, and fix it.
The backlog is virtually gone
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
Creepy and well crafted. Pretty much what you would expect from Neil Gaiman. Coraline finds a mysterious doorway from her house into an eerily similar house in which live “people” similar to her parents but with marked differences. Coraline finds herself fighting to get back to her own world to save herself and her parents.
Evil genius, by Catherine Jinks
Cadel Piggott is a genius. He has caused traffic jams, hacked computer systems, and sent the rail system into lockdown. He is even studying at a university designed to make him into a world dominating evil genius. But Cadel is struggling with his father’s expectations and the direction of his life. A really good fun read, with a sequel (Genius squad) that has just landed on my desk.
The Lab, by Jack heath
A genetically engineered, lab-bred, 16 year old superhuman action hero wreaks havoc in this debut novel by Australian author Jack Heath. Not quite up there with Horowitz’s Alex Ryder or Robert Muchamore’s Cherub series, but if you like crazy action with guns and people jumping off buildings and crawling through air conditioning ducts, then give this young Australian author a look.
Love like water, by Meme McDonald
Cathy grew up on a cattle station in Queensland and has moved to Alice Springs in the heart of Australia to begin a new life with her friend Margie. Margie is a party girl from the city looking for fun. They connect with Jay, an Aboriginal DJ from the coast, now working for the local indigenous radio station. Differences in cultures, expectations, backgrounds, and desires all come to the fore in this CBCA shortlisted book.
Slaughterboy, by Odo Hirsh
Set in a medieval village, Slaughterboy tells the story of a young boy with no parents who struggles to survive living on the streets. The book follows his life as he ends up working for various people in various roles, including that of a slaughterboy. It is not the story of an easy, happy life, but one story of struggle, hardship and growth. I found the book did a great job of taking me through a range of emotions regarding Conrad and his life. The ending was no exception to this.
I have previously written about The Quentaris chronicles, a fantasy series for children written by an impressive list of Australian writers. Beneath Quentaris by Michael Pryor includes Tal and Nisha who have bobbed up elsewhere in the series but there is no problem with reading them out of order. Enough background is given to make this story stand on its own. This book does introduce a new side of Quentaris though: Lower Quentaris. A city beneath the city. Nisha is still learning to manage her fire magician powers and finds herself caught up in troubling events that threaten the very city itself. These events lead her to Lower Quentaris where mysterious characters are bound by centuries old magic.
Beneath Quentaris is a nice read, fitting well with the rest of the series. They are not too long or too difficult to read. They have a bit of action and adventure, and top it all off with a nice dose of magic.
There was nothing special about the day Peter’s father died. At least not to start with. The alarm went and Peter hit snooze, hoping to pick up a dream about skipping stones across the sea. He was just finding his way back over the border into dreamland when the alarm went again, music on the radio, so he knew he’d dozed through the news and sports. Peter reached over and slapped snooze a second time - and was tasting that first golden lick of sleep when the racket started back up, some lame Green Day power balad he’d pay five bucks never to hear again. Was it his imagination or was even the radio on his case? It felt like everyone was, lately.
Runnerland is the first novel from Canadian author John Burns, although he has co-authored a cookbook and written for magazines and newspapers. I was going to link to the official Runnerland blog, but I have a thing about websites that insist on blaring music at you, drowning out the Belle & Sebastian song playing on iTunes. So feel free to go look at runnerland.blog.com and if the music starts, jump down to the post called “a dreamo new year” and hit pause on the little media player embedded there. Took me a while to find it. Edit: the music has been stopped, so go visit the runnerland blog.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll tell you about the book. Runnerland is the story of a kid called Peter and starts with him being pulled from class to go to the principal’s office where he finds out his father has died. Following this, he finds an envelope in the back of his father’s desk drawer revealing a long hidden secret. This combination of events sees Peter flee his home and he ends up living on the streets and mixing with a mysterious group of homeless kids and an older boy known only as Deckman.
Peter is essentially on a search for meaning. A search for what makes a person who they are. As the story develops, Peter starts having what are probably easiest to describe as visions, or hallucinations. These become an increasingly central part of the story and see it drift slightly into something containing a sort of fantasy element. This took me a little getting used to, but I thought both the plot and Peter’s character were well developed and I found it a good read that I am happy to recommend.
