Main Characters: Georgia, Jas, Rosie, Robbie, Tom, Wet Lindsey, Dave the Laugh, Jools, Ellen, Masimo, Sven

Series List:

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas
Dancing In My Nuddy Pants
Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled by His Furry Shorts
Love is a Many Trousered Thing
Stop in the Name of Pants
Are These My Basooma’s I See Before Me?

Anna’s Thoughts

I luuuuurve this series so much, it’s another one of those guilty pleasures of reading! The thing is, it’s silly, it’s crazy, and half of the time Georgia is just a dithering spaz, but that’s what makes it so great! You can laugh at her, laugh with her, feel sorry for her, and then want to hit her right up side her head, all in one book.

I first found out about the Georgia Nicolson books in 2002, when I was in 10th grade (hello, forever ago!). I can’t remember if I checked it out from the school library, or the local library, but I saw it and checked it out from somewhere… and then when I finished it? I promptly went to check out the rest of the series that they had at the time (which comes out to .. well two books, apparently ha). I remember vividly sitting for my pre-FCAT test, and then trying so very hard not to laugh reading On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God because I would have been kicked out and made to redo it. Then again, that sounds like something that would happen to Georgia.. Hmm. Then? THEN, I started hording the books, I pre-ordered the third book, and the fourth, then the fifth, sixth, until I unfortunately fell out of reading for a bit. Even when I DID start reading again I didn’t pick up with the Georgia Nicolson series again because I knew my mom wouldn’t read it. She prefers her books to have fantastical creatures in it, not crazy self-adsorbed lead characters! Then, the trip to Indiana, and the only point in my life where I had WEEKS with nothing to do, so I started reading – what would ya know?! They had the last three Georgia books (7-9), and so I read them, and I fell back in love with her and her world. Which led me to buy 7-9 & then pre-order #10: Are These My Basooma’s I See Before Me? The point in telling you all of this, is that I want you to know my history with the books. To see that even though I went a few years without reading them, that when I finally caught up, I loved them JUST as much as I did before.

Are These My Basooma’s I See Before Me? is the last and final installment of the Georgia Nicolson series, and I’m praying that Louise is just pulling our legs, because my life might very well be pointless with out! The last book is no let down from the others either, it’s a fun, fast paced, book that follows Georgia around through all her snogging, red bottomosity as well as while she’s on the rack of luuuuurve. I loved it, just as much as the others, the only downside is that – like with the other books – it implies that Georgia is the one ‘choosing’ who she’ll be with, but really it’s the world evolving around her that does the choosing. I would have liked more evolution with her feelings and who she finally chooses or well, who finally chooses her. It’s very obvious that she cares about him and he cares about her, but we don’t see very much of it, just tiny bits here and there, and it’s le crap. And I can’t say anymore about the matter or I might ruin it. Sad, because I sort of want to scream TEAM DAVE THE LAUGH! from the roof tops!

Bottom line, if you like fun books, with characters that are just as imperfect as the rest of us, but have a great humor about themselves, and quirky little bits of British information, then the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson are for you. I would guarantee that you’d love them, but I can’t. Sadly. So instead I will leave you with Georgia’s departing words for us all:

Snog on, snog on,
With hope in your heart,
And you’ll never snog alone,
You’ll never snog… alone.

P.S. If you’re over seas, there’s a chance the titles are different! Check out Georgia’s site to find out :)
P.S.S. There are also about three different sets of covers for the series: Two American sets & one for over seas, I believe.
P.S.S.S. I’m just continuing cause I don’t want the books to be over!
P.S.S.S.S. If you know why I’m actually doing this, be my new BFF?

By: Saundra Mitchell (felt I might need to reiterate that!)
Okay, so this is a totally true ghost story, are you ready? My cousin used to work third shift up on the north side, and one night it was pouring down rain when was driving home, right? And he sees this girl in a long, white dress walking on the side of the road, so of course he stops to pick her up. And she’s like, she wants to sit in the back, and he’s okay with that, because you know, she’s soaking wet and it probably makes her feel safer or whatever.

So he gives her his coat, because she’s shivering and freezing, right? She’s real quiet for most of the ride, except for giving him directions to her house. And he keeps looking in the rear view at her, and she looks like she might be crying, but when he asks her about it, she doesn’t say anything. He figures maybe she got in a fight with her boyfriend at the prom or something. Anyway, he follows the directions he gave her, but when he pulls up, it’s a graveyard, right?

He turns around to ask her what the deal is, and she’s *gone*. Just gone, right? But the cemetery gate is ajar, so he goes in to see if he can find her, figuring she’s all wound up from whatever happened. Only instead of finding a girl in a white party dress, he finds his coat. It’s folded on top of this gravestone. It has a girl’s name on it, and what’s weird is that the death date on the stone is exactly one year ago to the day.

You’ve probably heard this ghost story- maybe it happened to *your* cousin, or a friend of a friend, or somebody your best friend knows. It’s an example of one of the oldest urban legends we have. Urban legends are common stories, passed from storyteller to storyteller. They touch on universal themes, and they mutate to match their environment.

Sometimes the young woman was a murder victim, sometimes the victim of a drunk driving accident. But always, she hitches a ride and disappears. And she has done, for almost four hundred years. The earliest vanishing hitchhiker story was recorded in Sweden in 1602! In Chicago, the vanishing hitchhiker story is called Resurrection Mary- for the famous Resurrection Cemetery where the ghost allegedly walks. There are variations around the world, including Brazil’s Midnight Beauty and Switzerland’s White Woman of Belchen Tunnel.

But tunnels aren’t too scary- have you heard of Cry Woman Bridge? It’s right outside town, you know the one. Back in the fifties, this lady got in a fight with her husband, and took the baby to go calm down at her parents’ house, right? And after a while, she felt kind of silly over their little fight, and she decided to head home. But it was storming, and dark, and there was all kinds of fog. She couldn’t even see. She lost control of the car on top of the bridge and blew right off of it. In the morning, the police found the wreckage. The woman’s body was in the car, but all they ever found of the baby was its little blue blanket, floating in the water.

Now if you go out there at night, you can hear the woman screaming, and sometimes you can see her wandering the bridge, looking for her baby. You better not park out there, though. My best friend’s brother parked out there with his girlfriend one night just to scare her, and something jumped on the back of the car. They peeled out like WHOA, and when they got home, they found gouges in the paint, like somebody had dug their fingernails in.

Of course, Cry Woman Bridge is the version I heard growing up in central Indiana. One state over, it’s called Crybaby Bridge, and instead of a terrible crash claiming the baby’s life, an unwed teenage mother threw her baby off the bridge, and then killed herself in despair over it. In one version, you can stand on the bridge and chant “I HAVE YOUR BABY!” three times, and the mother’s ghost will appear and scream, “WHERE IS MY BABY?!”

Which reminds me of this slumber party favorite, but I swear it’s completely true. Okay, but you have to wait until midnight, right? And then you light a candle and turn out all the lights. Then you look into a mirror and you chant Bloody Mary over and over. And when you get to a hundred times, she appears in the mirror! I swear, this totally happened to me and my friends this one time in junior high! She reached right out of the mirror and tried to grab us! We had to blow out the candle to make her disappear.

Your version of Bloody Mary might be nicer than mine- some Marys show you your future husband. Or darkly, some show you how you’re going to die. The number of times you have to repeat her name changes- some say three, some say a hundred, but the result is always the same: the conjuration of an angry, trapped spirit. (Some versions even claim that if you summon Mary, she’ll rip your face off! That’s incentive to play, isn’t it?)

Even though I love haunted fiction, brand new ghosts written on brand new pages, I love urban legends, too. I love how universal they are. I love that they go on and on, for hundreds of years, across seas, in different nations. And I love how they change just enough so that every story becomes your personal ghost story. I wish you a happy halloween, and I hope you’ll do your part to keep folklore alive.

Because I’m your friend, and I swear to you- all these stories happened to me. Or maybe my cousin. Or maybe this guy I know…

Or maybe to you.

You can find out more about Saundra and her book Shadowed Summer at SaundraMitchell.com.

You can also find my review of Shadowed Summer here!

Main Characters: Kara, Sakura, Miho

Summary:

Kara’s afraid to go to sleep—until the nightmares come when she’s awake . . . .

Sixteen-year-old Kara Foster is an outsider in Japan, but is doing her best to fit at the private school where her father is teaching English for the year. Fortunately she’s befriended by Sakura, a fellow outsider struggling to make sense of her sister’s unsolved murder some months ago. No one seems to care about the beautiful girl who was so brutally murdered, and the other students go on as if nothing has happened. Unfortunately, the calm doesn’t last for long. Kara begins to have nightmares, and soon other students in the school turn up dead, viciously attacked by someone . . . or something. Is Sakura getting back at those she thinks are responsible for her sister’s death? Or has her dead sister come back to take revenge for herself?

Anna’s Thoughts

I found out about The Waking: Dreams of the Dead through Lenore who had a Bloomsbury contest going on, which I was lucky enough to win. Before I found out about that, and the second I saw the book in the contest post, it was put into my TBR pile. The book sounded interesting to begin with, and then I went to the site to read the prologue, and that first sentence of the prologue coupled with the end of it, dragged me in completely.

“Akane Murakami died for a boy she did not love.”
The Waking:Dreams of the Dead, Prologue

“The whole of Miyazu Bay seemed comprised of her tears. Even the sky wept as she died.
For a boy she did not love.”
The Waking:Dreams of the Dead, Prologue

The prologue of Dreams of the Dead was one of the best and most intriguing, vividly detailed, introduction chapters I have ever read, not to mention tremendously heartbreaking. That very first sentence is what pulled me into Dreams of the Dead, and the imagary, culture and folklore is what kept me until the very end. Dreams of the Dead was amazing, simple as that.

The plot is original, the characters are likable (or not likable, depending on who you’re talking about…), and there’s so much Japanese culture. I loved learning about the schools and customs that are used there that resemble nothing we have in the US. As well as the lore and beliefs about the dead that the Japanese have. The only problem with learning these things however, is that I have no outside personal knowledge of any of those things, so I have to take the authors word for it, unless I want a couple hours of research ahead of me!

Not to mention, it’s scary. Not ‘OMG gonna pee myself’ scary, but ‘holy mother of baby Jesus what is going on’ scary. And Thomas’ vivid descriptions of everything just intensifies that ten fold. I’ve heard a few reviews say that the book was slow for them, and might be for major horror fans, but it wasn’t for me. Not even a little bit. It was gripping and thrilling, and I read the entire thing in one whole sitting. I did stop to eat dinner, but the entire time, I was sitting there thinking about what happened next, I didn’t even finish eating, I wanted to get back to reading it so badly!

A few of the names and places in the book are slightly confusing to me, which is why it’s rating is lacking 1/2 a star. I remember a few times Thomas would mention something, and the only thing that would go through my mind was “what in the world is he talking about?” Which I would then have to look up the words for, but it doesn’t hinder the story very much, even if you don’t want to look up the words, it’s very easy to move on from them without it effecting the story at all.

I LOVED the twist in the plot as we got nearer to the end and figuring out who or rather what was tormenting Kara, her friends, and the school! I did not expect it to turn out the way that it did, but when it did turn out that way I loved learning about it! And that is all I can say about the matter, because even with that I’m on the verge of giving something away!

Overall it was an incredible book, bursting at the seems with Japanese culture, folklore, a great plot, original settings and wonderful characters. I really cannot wait for the sequel The Waking: Spirits of the Noh out in May of 2010!

You can find out more about Thomas Randall and The Waking books on his site at ThomasRandall.net. You can also read the first chapter of The Waking: Dreams of the Dead here!

Main Characters: Dai, Westly, Grandma, Spencer, Galen

Summary:

Diamond “Dai” Gold is an eighteen-year-old whose peaceful existence shatters when she awakens in a world straight from a fairy tale, instantly immersed in a desperate fight for her life. Her adventure continues as she discovers that not only is her past intertwined with this world, but that it is her destiny to save it from destruction and rule by a dangerous group known as the Malo.

In a world where deception and secrets run rampant, Dai must decide which side she can really trust. Armed only with the protection of a boy who seems to want to trade her life for the safety of his friends, Dai has many secrets to discover on her perilous journey to save this world, and herself in the process.

Anna’s Thoughts

This book is something else. Really. It reminds me a little bit of the show for Legend of the Seeker, not that it’s the same in it’s content, but the feeling is the same. The kingdoms and the overall feel of the book translates into the same general feeling of the show, and for this reason I am quite convinced that Sci-Fi (sorry, Syfy) should really pick it up for a show. It totally could work! I could watch it right after Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary!

I loved most of the characters, Dai was a little .. ermm.. over dramatic for my tastes? I understand completely that she wants to go home, and she wants to go back to her life, but if she’s stuck, she’s stuck. So it got a little grating how she snapped at people sometimes when they hadn’t really done anything. I was also mildly annoyed at how much she questions herself in the beginning of the book, and how she compared herself so much to Adele (her best friend). I really liked her otherwise, she was a very strong and smart character set in her ways and her personality. I loved seeing her grow throughout the book as well, where she stops comparing herself so much, and becomes somewhat confidant in herself and her abilities. I also liked Westly, and the dynamic him and Dai have although they’re both convinced the other hates them. They still try, which is a lot more than I can say for a lot of people nowadays. The side characters are interesting as well, I love Grandma and Galen, and most of all Spencer – I think he’s my favourite character by far, and I can’t wait for the possibility to get to know more about all of them.

As for the plot, it was a little shaky for me towards the end, but otherwise very fun and fast paced chalk full of knowledge. About half way through the book we meet someone named Connor, and Connor has something with him that is very important. All we ever learn about it though is that it’s a ‘pouch’, we don’t learn what is so important about the pouch, or why they end up risking their lives for it! We also don’t learn HOW Dai was brought to the alternate world. We learn that she HAS been, WHY, and WHAT she has to do, but there is no HOW. Which is maybe only important to me?! We learn that it’s her destiny, but I’d like to know why that day/time.. was it because she was in the cabin, in the right place, or would it have happened no matter where she was? If she had never entered the cabin would she had never been brought to the other world? Other than those two issues I really liked the world that we get to see, where ‘chivalry’ is a word that people actually know the meaning to, and where there’s more of a forest than there is of a highway. I also liked when we found out how what Dai is going through ties into her past, and her family. I really hope that we learn later on why it’s her family, and why it’s their mission to do this, and what happened to her grandma that made it okay for her to leave even though she obviously didn’t defeat the Malo.

The most impressive thing about the characters and it’s plot, other than Westly being the ‘bad boy’ is that there aren’t really a lot of cliche’s. And by ‘aren’t really a lot’ I mean I can’t think of any. At all. Which is always a plus when someone can come up with something unique enough they don’t have to use elements that have been used a hundred times before.

Overall I loved the plot, I loved the characters, I honestly love the world that Vivian managed to create, and I absolutely cannot wait to read the next book in the series!

You can find out more about Vivian at her site: vivian-marie.com
You can also read the first two chapters of The Quest of Dai: The Eroe here.