In My Mailbox (2)

I'm a tiny bit seedy from the dinner party I hosted for my three gorgeous friends last night, so this might be brief. I made good, solid comfort food to bid farewell to winter: roo stew and mashed potatoes, and self-saucing chocolate pudding with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Shona made Athol Brose for our digestif, a concoction she learned from her time in the Scottish Highlands. It's delicious, and tastes almost like a nog: 7 parts water, 7 parts whiskey, 5 parts cream and one part honey, warmed on the stove. Traditionally the water has had oats steeped in it, but we went for the low-fuss version. Doesn't it just make you want to curl up with a big mug and a Diana Gabaldon novel? Preferably while it rains.

This week I got one book for review: The Demon's Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan. I feel the need to read more YA with male protagonists, and the premise sounds fantastic. And how cool is the Australia/UK cover? I love the bird standing on the apostrophe!

I bought The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody and How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier on Tuesday from the Melbourne Writers' Festival, and they were both lovely enough to sign them for me, which I'm pretty stoked about.

My special OS order came in too: a hardback edition of The Hunger Games! Must do a reread before Catching Fire comes out.

I'm getting my dad into YA! This year he became a high-school teacher (mostly because it meant he could talk maths and physics all day to a captive audience, I reckon) so naturally he should have some quality books to discuss with his students. He's a speculative nut like me and has read all the classics in my Dystopia Challenge, so I started him off with the Obernewtyn Chronicles, which he's devouring, and The Hunger Games which I hope he loves as much as me. Then I'm thinking Snyder's Study series, and Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series. He's writing a sci-fi book of his own right now and we read each others work which is pretty cool!

From the library I got Ghostgirl by Tonya Hurley, The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, World War Z by Max Brooks (Googling it just now I see it's due out as a movie next year!) and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Can you tell which one I'm most excited about? "TODD HEWITT!!" If you haven't started this series yet now is the time because book two came out recently. The writing style and voice in these books are just so unique. As a reader I adore it and as a writer I'm green with envy. It's good frigging sci-fi.

After having a good rant about Unwind at Lauren on i was a teenage book geek I think I've finally sorted out my feelings about it. If you've read it, you'll know it's a difficult book, and for months I've been unable to review it. Tomorrow I'm going to try to put my blobby, amoeba-like feelings into words. Probably. Unless girls' night tonight turns messy ...

Three days until the US release and ten days til the Australian release of the most anticipated book of the year! A big bowl of strawberry ice-cream* to the first person who guesses which book I'm talking about. Oh, lookee, my first contest. Open to ... THE UNIVERSE.

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*BYO bowl and strawberry ice-cream.

Happy Caturday!