Vine Leaves No. 6

The 6th issue of Vine Leaves Lit. Journal is out, this time one of my photos is in it, on page 31. The front and back page are stunning, and there's a cornucopia of amazing poems and short pieces in it. Absolutely worth checking out.

Disintegrate by Christine Klocek-Lim

Disintegrate by Christine Klocek-Lim

Publication date: 19th April 2013

Published by Evernight Teen

young adult, romance, paranormal, suspense

Emily just wanted a normal life: a boyfriend, college, two parents who loved her. Instead, her dad disappeared when she was fourteen and her life at college is anything but ordinary.

When you can manipulate matter like putty and you have no idea why, how do you pretend to be like everyone else? What happens when you meet a guy who has the same powers? Do you trust him to help you find the answers you need?

Emily desperately wants to believe that Jax can help, but the stakes grow higher than she’d ever expected: someone is after them and they’re not afraid to use violence to get what they want.

A wonderfully suspenseful YA novel that tackles not only such topics as special skills, bio engineering, and abuse of science, but also themes close to any reader, adult or young adult, like themes of family, friendship, love, belonging.

This novel is easy to read in one sitting as it pulls you in from the first pages and doesn’t let go to the very last surprise in the Epilogue. The relationship between the two main characters, Emily and Jax, is marvellously dynamic and evolving. Their relationship changes them, changes their view of life. It helps them find the strength to search for the reasons behind their special skills. That secret, in turn, is the basis for the intense, action-packed plot that doesn’t disappoint with twists and turns and surprising revelations. 

Emily’s struggle to find her place, to belong, is something many young adult readers will be able to identify with. She is different, but only on the surface, deep down she’s searching for parental love and guidance, for friendship that she finds in her roommate, for love that comes along in the form of Jax, a boy with skills similar to her own and even bigger problems. When they are being mercilessly hunted, attacked, and even kidnapped, they come to realize that friendship can give you strength, and that family is not always who you’re related to.

School Spirits (review)

School Spirits by Rachel Hawkins
Published by Disney-Hyperion, May 2013
Young Adult, paranormal, fantasy, romance

I never read Hex Hall so this was my first encounter with Rachel Hawkins. And I liked it.

In the flood of paranormal young adult fiction, School Spirits is a good addition to this genre. Perhaps it doesn't add anything new in terms of how it deals with the lore about vampires, witches, ghosts etc., but it offers a look from a different perspective. Izzy is a hunter of all things supernatural, a job her family's been doing for centuries. She lives for it, she has lost her sister to it. She doesn't know life outside the hunting, instead of going to the cinema with friends, she practices using weapons and handling vampires.
The main themes of the novel are isolation, friendship, family, growing up, showing us what it is like to be all alone and not having friends. Izzy may think disposing of a ghost is super easy, but she doesn't have a clue about how normal teenage girls behave, she doens't know they're supposed to go to the restroom in groups, or that you shouldn't sit with your friends if you're on a date with a boy. This aspect of the book was a delight to read.
Not that the paranormal stuff wasn't fun and suspenseful. The plot is well-paced with zingy dialogue, comic incidents and enough mystery to make up for the lack of action (of the ghost busting variety).
Perhaps a little more depth to the characters of Romy and Anderson would've been a plus, but Izzy and Dex are delightful characters, fun, engaging, even a little mysterious at times.
Once I started, I read the book in one sitting, wanting to find out what the deal with the ghost was, and how things would develop between Izzy and Dex. I wasn't disappointed with the ending either.

Black&White

In the entire expanse of the sky visible from my window, there is only one white-ish stain in the sedative greyness. Nature is melancholically motionless, resignedly taking the rain that’s pounding the boughs in their winter nakedness. Fog, so thick it’s a wonder raindrops can pass through, drifts lazily like molasses in between the hills. I imagine it feels like fleece, only colder. Damper. I realized how little I know about birds when I heard one sing in the rain. I didn’t recognize it. I only know the most common birds, like swallows, blackbirds, tits, jays, magpies. A shame.

 ***

The above piece was inspired by Worlds Apart that I reviewed and Alain de Botton's book The Art of Travel. Noticing the simplest things is an art in itself. One worth practising. As De Botton says, that is the only way to lay claim to wonderful places, events, experiences. The only way to commit them to memory. 

It should be practiced daily.

Marks in Vine Leaves Lit Journal

Freshly out - 5th issue of Vine Leaves Literary Journal, including my vignette Marks on page 10. We all hurt, but on some, pain leaves its marks ... Indelible marks.

Brazilian lyric

Two weeks ago I decided to join this reading challenge: 7 continents, 7 billion people, 7 books. Although I have too much work as it is, I can never say no to a good reading challenge.  Especially, if it means getting to know new literary horizons.

The first challenge is to pick a book from one of the countries with the biggest population. I decided for Indonesia. Excited, I searched the library database for an Indonesian writer. I tried translations into Slovene. I tried English. Italian. French. ... I couldn't find anything. I was forced to change plans.

I know a few Brazilian authors, but no poets. So when I came across an anthology of contemporary brazilian lyric, I grabbed it.

This was an entirely new experience for me (which is a great side effect of such challenges). The poets introduced in this collection were Manoel de Barros, Ferreira Gullar, Ivan Junqueira, Adelia Luzia Prado Freitas, Antonio Cicero, Paulo Henriques Britto, Chacal, Arnaldo Antunes, arlito Azevedo and Eucanaa Ferraz. None of them were familiar to me before. Most of them were born in the 1930' and started writing in the atmosphere of modernism, when Brazil found its identity and was begining to form its true Brazilian soul.

I felt most inspired by poems by Adelia Luzia whose main topic is the banality of everyday life. She doesn't speak about grandiose themes, she describes gutting freshly caught fish and talks about painting the house orange and thus waking up into a bright day every morning. I found a refined sense of humour in her work. I found pleasure in her poems.

Wor(l)ds apart

Worlds Apart

Mindscapes

I love travelling. I feel more at home in foreign places than I do at home. Not that I don’t love living where I live, but I love being where(ever) I am, especially if it’s new, exciting, covered in mystery of the unknown and ripe with possibilities of discovery. 

Although India and China are not my ultimate travel destinations, discovering them through the words of Dorothee and Smitha was a special adventure. It wasn’t so much about the travel from place to place as it was about the travelling of the mind. Discoveries about the self, new sights of the soul, images of life as such, of feeling at home abroad and lost at home.

It was also a discovery of my own surroundings. Dorothee and Smitha offered me a new view of my own hometown, of the things I see (but didn’t see) daily through their musings about people, spaces, time, magic, travel.

I travelled to China, and India, and Germany, and Slovenia. I saw places I never actually saw. I read beautiful words and imagined breathtaking images, all just following their lead. Like Dorothee said, journeys “spin the wheel of thoughts.” 

And the wheel keeps spinning hours after I finished the book.