Pages Breathing Fire: 10 Books About Dragons

This year I’ve been reading for the Andre Norton Award, which has been great in that a ton of books have arrived and insane in that a TON of books have arrived and need to be read. I wanted to call out some of my favorites so far.

• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black: Vampires, yes. But an interesting twist on them, and a protagonist who drags us along to Coldtown to find its secrets.
• The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell: This is listed as Jan 2014 for the paperback edition, but I believe the e-version was self-published in 2013. It’s a terrific teen superhero adventure, featuring a protagonist trying to figure out if he’s a hero or a villain. IT has a sequel as well, The Trials of Renegade X.
• Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst: I don’t usually like protagonists who wake up with amnesia, but here Eve and her situation grabbed me and made me care much faster than such narratives usually do. The book managed to surprise me, and did so in a really engaging way.
• Contanimated by Em Garner: This is a zombie story, so I didn’t expect to like it much. But the zombies are caused by a diet drink, and the challenge is integrating the contaminated into society. When that contaminated is your mother, it’s a whole new issue. The ending is not as satisfying as it could be – things feel a bit too easy — but overall this was a gripping, hard to put down book.
• Control by Lydia Kang: Plenty of corporate-controlled futures in the YA I read this year, and this was one of the more interesting ones. The ensemble of teen characters are engaging, entertaining, and above all believable.
• The Color of Rain by Cori McCarthy: This features a fairly adult theme, in that the protagonist prostitutes herself to get herself and her brother off planet. But the sex is fairly low-key and not depicted in the thorough way it might be for adults. It’s a good story with a charismatic main character in desperate straits.
• Twinmaker by Sean Williams: This book is an extended exploration of the implications of matter transporters. It’s a lot of fun, fast-paced, and ingenious.

#sfwapro

I love the dictionary. I have, in fact, been known to dip into it for pleasure, to swoon with delight at a new word like lacustrine or neritic. When I was in grad school, we played a version of Balderdash that far predated the boxed set, using an American Heritage dictionary that still sits on my shelf.

What: Any book of words that tells you what’s built into them, whether it’s a dictionary of hobby-related vocabularies or a more complete overview. I’ve got a shelf’s worth of them, including a number of foreign language dictionaries and the beloved Compact edition of the OED my brother gave me one year.

Who: If you are someone who uses words, and want to make sure you are using them correctly, use a dictionary. A while back while I was teaching at Hopkins, a student handed in a piece that was unsettling in a way I’d never encountered before, consistently misusing words. When we talked about it, she revealed she’d written the piece and then used a thesaurus “to make the words fancier.”

Why: If you are going to write, you must know how to use words. They are the basic building block of the trade. Read the dictionary in order to use them with rigorous precision, an appreciation for their history, and an understanding of their grammatical use.

When: All the time. On your phone. While waiting for your bus. When you want to refill your tank of words.

Where and how: The deeper the dictionary, the more interest it holds for me. I like specialized dictionaries that list fashion terms or kinds of birds or words taken from other languages.

#sfwapro