Week in Review: May 25th

Inspired by Anna @ Anna Reads.

What  I Did:

I had/have a long 4-day weekend so I spent some time book shopping, reading, blogging, and tried to get outside as much as possible! I finally got to play tennis again with some friends that are home from college and I had a great time! It was also #IReadYA week so I had tons of fun scrolling through the Twitter hashtag and chatting about YA!

Links I Loved:

• Jackie @ She Reads She Blogs went on a rant about all the pretty British boys that have taken over the world of YA book to screen adaptations!
• April & Jen @ The Starry-Eyed Revue had some really great commentary regarding their (and I think a lot of readers’) love/hate relationship with LOVE TRIANGLES.

In which I gush about…Book covers & the people that design them!

Lately I have been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do after high school and college. I know that’s way off in the future, but I’m getting really excited about it! I’ve known for a long time that I want to go into the graphic design field. More recently I’ve been looking into jobs that combine both my love of books and design into one. I’ve pulled up many publishers’ job openings pages and scrolled to find the art and design occupations and I guess I’ve finally decided on the exact job I want: I want to design book covers.

Some people may think that in a world where there’s the possibility to be a scientist or a doctor, being a designer isn’t the best job choice. I get the impression my counselor at school feels this way. She tried to discourage me from the arts and even went as far as saying that I shouldn’t want to be a “starving artist.” Of course I don’t want to be a starving artist, but art is a passion of mine, just as books are. I strongly believe that going to work as a designer every day would make my days enjoyable instead of some that wish they chose a different path.

Clearly I love art, but the thing that I realized told myself that graphic arts was the way to go was when I discovered that I have an obsession with FONTS. Typography, typeface, whatever you want to call it. I love it. And I love the way an artist can blend typography together with a photograph, or other art to create a book cover.

Even more importantly, I love the way in which a book cover has the ability to influence a person’s decision about whether or not they pick a book up to see what it’s all about. I want to be able to catch a person’s eye with a cover I’ve designed and be able to know that I helped someone experience a new story. That feeling would be worth the world to me. Because let’s face it, we all judge books by their covers.

What really got me thinking about this was that I recently bought Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson. That cover has to be one of my favorite covers of all time. It’s simple, yet gets the vibe of the story across perfectly. I’m pretty much obsessed with it. So I did my research. I found out the jacket designer was Lucy Ruth Cummins and she designed more of my all time favorite covers, too!

        

I’m not really sure the point of this post other than to talk to you guys about the future I’m hoping for and my love of covers. But, if any of you are cover designers or work in the design department of publishing I would love to hear more about the job itself. The good and the bad, what you like and dislike, etc. I want to know all about it! Also tips on courses I may want to take in the future to better my chances of getting a position…anything and everything I want to hear it!

xo,

Emily

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Release Date: May 13, 2014

Pages: 240

Format: Hardcover

Source: Bought

Series: N/A

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

I went into We Were Liars completely blind. I had no idea what it was about other than the vaguer than vague description and the numerous advance review rating it 5 stars. After all, once you finish reading this book you’re asked to lie…

There were so many promotions for this book, so much hype, that by the time I got to reading it a few days after it’s release I was nervous I was going to be let down. I’m glad to say that for the majority of the book I wasn’t.

The whole book is written to be very mysterious, sometimes confusing. I felt a lot like I was in a daze while reading, like I’d just “come to” after being in a coma – a state of delirium. But I really loved E. Lockhart’s prose-like way of writing. Her style went along perfectly with the kind of book that We Were Liars is – a dark and dreamy one.

Unfortunately the ending was the only part of the book that I felt a little let down by. It has nothing to do with the book itself, just the huge amount of hype surrounding the book and everyone talking about the “shocking” ending. The ending was indeed shocking, but I felt like I had been expecting more due to all the advance talk. If I hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the hype I would definitely give this 5 hearts!

Overall, We Were Liars is beautifully written, perfect for summer. My one recommendation for those of you who still want to read this: put all the reviews, hype, etc out of your mind and just enjoy the book. This was the first book I’ve read by E. Lockhart and I will definitely be adding more to my TBR after this one!

Before I Blogged (#3) – Elsewhere

Before I Blogged is a weekly feature inspired by Jamie @ The Perpetual Page-Turner in which I share a book that I read and loved before I started blogging!

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Publisher: Square Fish

Release Date: May 15, 2007

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Waiting on…A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine in which we share a book that we are eagerly anticipating!

Publisher: HarperTeen

Release Date: November 4, 2014

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Every Day meets Cloud Atlas in this heart-racing, space- and time-bending, epic new trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray.

Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.

Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.

A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.