Tag Archives: Patrick Rothfuss

May 22, 2012 · 8:11 am

Tammy’s Top Ten Blogs/Sites I Read That AREN’T About Books

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  What a fun theme this week! I’m curious to see what other non-book sites book bloggers like to read. Here are my top ten blogs/sites:

1. The Fire Wire:  http://firewireblog.com. I love this blog! Larry Fire is a geek like me, and he finds the coolest information on the internet about popular culture and brings it all to his blog. I am an email subscriber, so I know that he often posts as many as 5-8 new posts per day. And they are all pretty cool.

2. The Bloggess:  http://thebloggess.com.  Word of warning: if you are offended by bad language, best not to visit this site.  I love Jenny Lawson! She’s hysterically funny. She’s got a book out called Let’s Pretend This Never Happened which I haven’t read but I plan to some day. She seems to really like Nathan Fillion, and you can read one of my favorite posts here.

3. Patrick Rothfuss, Pat’s Blog:  http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com.  Yes I know, Pat Rothfuss is a writer, and this top ten is supposed to be about other things. But Pat talks about lots of stuff on his blog in addition to books. He’s pretty geeky too.  If you visit his blog you may discover lots of fun things that you didn’t even know existed! He also loves Joss Whedon, which is my book makes him a god.

4. Martin Millar’s Blog:  http://martin-millar.blogspot.com.  OK I do have a few writers listed here. But only because they have lots to say about non-book related things. Martin lives in London and he loves English punk rock from the 70′s.  He talks about the Sex Pistols a lot. Plus he’s a huge Buffy fan! He’s a fantastic humorous fantasy and horror writer, too. But we’re not talking about that today…

5. dafont.com: http://dafont.com. I love fonts.  Words cannot express how much I love fonts! Maybe if I wrote those words down and used fonts that I love, then words would express how much I love fonts. I love free fonts even more. Not all the fonts on dafont are free, but many are.  If you’re looking for something different in the font department, you must go to dafont.com!

6.  Geek & Sundry – The Flog: http://theflog.geekandsundry.com. Felicia Day was an actor on Buffy during Season 7.  She was one of the many “potential slayers” of that season.  After that she got semi-famous and was the heroine on Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog. She’s done a bunch of other stuff, including a web video series called The Guild, which is pretty funny, especially if you are a gamer.  The Flog is her own personal video blog, and it’s pretty funny too. Check out this episode, where she talks about Steampunk and visits a Steampunk clothing store (that just happens to be right in my own backyard!).

7. Whedonesque: http://whedonesque.com. That’s right, folks: Joss Whedon, king of all things wonderful. This site collects internet stories from all over and puts them in one convenient place for Whedonites to view. It incorporates every actor who has ever been involved in a Joss Whedon project, and references all his past and current projects as well (yes, that includes Buffy!) Check it out, you know you want to…

8. Hit or Miss Movies: http://www.hitormissmovies.com.  This one is kind of cheating. I actually know Miss Movies! Miss Movies is her alternate ego. In real life she’s someone else…sorry, I can’t tell you who! Anyway, she knows a lot about movies. She has a very cool podcast series on iTunes called Miss Movies Minute.

9. TeeFury: http://www.teefury.com.  I love this website, but it’s also a bit frustrating.  They have this daily special t-shirt design, but they only sell the shirt for 24 hours, so if you miss that window, you can’t buy the shirt.  I found a cool Buffy shirt once but I didn’t know about the 24 hour thing. Oh well. You can also submit your own t-shirt design and they might use it. Cool.

10. Rachel Ray:  http://www.rachaelray.com. I had to put at least one cooking website here, right?  I love Rachel Ray, I love her show, and I love a lot of her recipes. I have to admit I don’t really like to cook very much, but watching Rachel Ray always inspires me to try something new. Now whenever I cook pasta I always say “Everyone in the hot tub!”

So, what blogs/sites do you like to read??

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April 24, 2012 · 8:03 am

Tammy’s Top Ten All Time Favorite Characters in Books

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  If you head on over to their site, you can see other bloggers’ top ten lists too. This week is tough!  I mean, what do you do? Go back to the classics?  I decided to focus on books I’ve read in the past five years or so.  And I’ve noticed my list features lots of smart, beautiful, and resourceful women. With a couple of guys thrown in!  Here we go, in no particular order:

Rudy from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I love this book so much. And although I’m listing Rudy as my favorite character, I really love Liesel as well. This is a survival story, a love story, a sad story, and a story of hope. Liesel is the book thief, but I fell in love with her friend Rudy. Just read it, if you haven’t yet. You won’t regret it.

Candy from Emergence by David R. Palmer.  I’m so glad I thought of this book. It’s been years since I read it, but it ranks high up on my list of favorite SF stories.  Candy is an incredibly smart eleven-year-old survivor of a bionuclear plague.  With her pet parrot Terry, she sets out on a journey to find other survivors.  Yes, it sounds like a million other post-apocalyptic novels, but it’s unlike anything else you’ll ever read. I’m holding on tight to my frayed paperback copy, because unfortunately, Emergence is out of print at the moment.

Fire from Fire by Kristin Cashore. I am eagerly awaiting Bitterblue, the final book in Cashore’s trilogy, but until then I can gush over Fire, the second in the series. In this world, Fire is called a monster.  She has fiery red, beautiful hair and can control people and read their minds.  She is such a unique character, that it’s hard to compare her to anyone else.

Jake from The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan. Jake is the last werewolf on Earth, and he is one bad-ass dude.  But he’s also handsome, suave and charismatic. Plus he has the heart of a poet. Or at least Duncan does. Jake has been around the block and has given up hope, and now that he’s being hunted, he’s almost ready to go quietly.  You kinda feel sorry for the guy, but he finds the will to live when he meets…well, I don’t want to spoil it for you…

Myfawny Thomas from The Rook by Daniel O’Malley. “Myfawny” rhymes with “Tiffany.”  That’s one of the first things you learn about this wonderful character, told in her own words.  I loved The Rook and just never got around to writing a review, but Myfawny’s first person account of how she wakes up in someone else’s body (she’s actually lost her memory) and how she solves the mystery of who exactly is trying to kill her is one of the more original stories I’ve read recently.

Unnamed narrator from Incendiary by Chris Cleave.  The subject matter about a London bombing at a soccer game is tough to swallow,  and I don’t think I would have been able to get through it if it weren’t for the heart-felt narration of a woman whose husband and son were killed in the stadium.  Written as a letter to Osama bin Laden,  the narrator’s voice is fraught with sorrow and anger, but she gets through the horrible days after the bombing with a wry humor. She is truly an unforgettable woman.

Iko from Cinder by Marissa Meyer.  One of my most recent five-star reviews, Cinder is a SF take on the Cinderella fairy tale. Its structure follows the events in the classic tale, but the unique characters make this quite different. I love the character of Cinder, but I actually loved her android Iko even more.  Iko is quite intelligent for an android, and she is Cinder’s constant companion.  She keeps Cinder’s secrets just like a real friend, and you won’t believe what happens to her near the end of the story, or how Meyer sets the stage for Iko’s reappearance in the next book in the series, Scarlet.

Kvothe from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Kvothe is everything a great character should be: dashing, a talented musician and gifted with the ability to do just about everything well. He’s also irreverent and has a mysterious past. He makes women swoon and breaks lots of rules.  I didn’t like Rothfuss’ second book, The Wise Man’s Fear, as much, but I did find even more to love about Kvothe.

Karou from Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor. Here’s another quirky, intelligent and talented female character with colored hair! Daughter of Smoke & Bone was a favorite of mine last year, mostly due to the characters, but also because Laini’s writing is so vibrant and engaging. You can tell she truly loves the characters she is writing about, and that makes the reader love them as well. Deep down I want to be Karou, a girl who can make wishes come true and has blue hair.

Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.  Although she is abused in the beginning of the story, Lisbeth gets her sweet revenge and never lets the bad guys crush her spirit. How can you not love a character like that? And she’s a computer hacker to boot. I don’t really want to be her, but I do admire her tenacity and focus.

So, who are your favorite characters?

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December 5, 2011 · 9:15 am

An Opportunity to Give – and Receive (Books)

In lieu of recommending a new book this week, and in the spirit of the holiday season, I would like to introduce you to Worldbuilders, and by extension introduce you to Patrick Rothfuss.

Patrick Rothfuss is the author of a couple of hefty fantasy novels which you may or may not have heard of:  The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, books one and two of the Kingkiller Chronicles.  The books have everything good fantasy novels should have:  great characters, long  journeys, danger, magic, love, hijinks, and enough words to keep a reader entertained for, well, however long it takes you to read 900 pages or so.  Pat has a great blog that I’ve been reading faithfully for about three years, and it was there that I first encountered Heifer International, an organization that provides families worldwide with animals such as goats, chickens, and cows and empowers them to take care of themselves and their children.  I like this organization because the money you donate actually goes to something tangible.  It seems to me that helping people help themselves is one of the best gifts you can give.

So over the years, Pat got his readers to donate to Heifer International, and at some point he created a name for all the fundraising he and his fans were doing.  Worldbuilders seems to get bigger every year, and this year he is trying to top last year’s donations of over $190,000.  But the best part of this fundraiser is that Pat will be giving away hundreds, if not thousands, of donated books and other fantastic items to those who donate through Worldbuilders!  Here’s the short version of how this works.  For every $10 you donate, your name goes in the raffle.  So if you donate $50, for example, your name goes in 5 times.  At the end of the fundraiser, which goes through January 31st, Pat will draw names and give away the hundreds of books that have been donated.  It’s a great opportunity to possibly win a highly collectible book and help a family in need at the same time.  Pat explains things much better than I do, so if you click on the Worldbuilders logo above, you will go straight to his blog.  If you click here, you will be taken to his latest blog post where he describes the bounteous donations of  Subterranean Press, just to give you an example of the books he’ll be giving away.

So if you are looking for a charity to donate to this holiday season, check out Worldbuilders and Heifer International.  And keep reading Pat’s blog.  I know I will.

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