TIG’s first bookstore!

March 28, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 2 Comments

I have joined forces with my first bookstore!

Paperback copies of The Illuminator’s Gift are now available at Spectator Books in Piedmont, CA! (I blogged about them when I first visited last month.)

On a bohemian street offering boutiques, antiques, and handcrafted coffee, check out this independent bookstore that’s bigger on the inside. Spectator Books sells both used and new books. Their fiction selection (for both adults and children) is particularly impressive.

And now I can personally attest to one of the titles in that section 🙂

So if you find yourself in the area, get a little lost in this lovely labyrinth of books. And maybe pick up a certain title while you’re there (wink, wink).

Book Family

March 21, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 4 Comments

One of the things I didn’t realize I’d get when I wrote a book was a book family.

I thought writing a book was about sitting alone for hours and hours, documenting your thoughts and ideas, and sending them out to other people. Like a one-way letter to the world.

What I didn’t realize was that others would write back.

The Illuminator’s Gift is connecting me with all sorts of people: friends and strangers, children and adults, people who are like me and people who are different. As they read, the story becomes theirs. The ideas no longer belong to just me.

It’s the best thing ever.

I’ve gotten to meet dozens of kids in schools. Some of them have written me letters with questions about the book that I’d never thought of before.

One girl even wrote a book report. I think her summary of the story was better than mine.

One precious boy had The Illuminator’s Gift read aloud to him because he can’t see the black-and-white letters on the page. He catalogued his reading time in Braille, a language of dots that I don’t yet know how to read.

And I’m not the only storyteller out there. Two anonymous writers sent me prequel and sequel chapters to The Illuminator’s Gift. Maybe I should take a leaf from their book. So to speak.

Maybe the most fun, though, is the e-mail correspondence I get to do with people I’ve never even met. As a kid, I was too shy to write to my favorite authors (even the ones who were still alive). I didn’t want to bother them or take up their time. Now I see that not only was I missing out on the fun of a correspondence–I might have made their day. I wish I’d been as brave as the kids who write to me now.

I thought writing a book was something I would start, then finish. That once it was published, the journey would be complete.

I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The journey is just beginning. What was once a one-way letter is now a two-way conversation.

I am blessed by a book family, bound together by words and pages.

Spring Miracles

March 14, 2014 ~ Alina ~ Leave a comment

I never can decide whether spring or fall is my favorite season. Both are beautiful, offering change and new directions, the beginnings of new roads and opportunities.

But with spring outside, ready to touch, see, and smell, I’m feeling a bit swayed toward the beauty of this season.

It’s in the living buzz of the bees as they stuff their pockets with pollen.

It’s in the scalloped edges of the new leaves, still sticky from their buds.

It’s in the outrageous colors of the flowers, outdoing the imagination of any fashion designer.

It’s in the unshorn grass, joyful to be alive and growing.

It’s in the unfurling petals, reaching toward the sun.

It’s the magic and mystery of the world coming back to life, of beauty and expectancy, of wonder even in the tiniest of vessels.

And so I pay attention.

Because each day is its own kind of miracle.

Independent Bookstores: Piedmont Avenue

March 7, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 4 Comments

It’s been a while since I reviewed any independent bookstores, but boy, do I have some good ones for you today.

The motivation behind my birthday adventures to Oakland several weeks ago was largely the concentration of independent bookstores on Piedmont Avenue. There are at least four. Mere blocks from each other. It was perfect.

First up: Owl and Company Bookshop. The shop is owned by Michael Calvello, who has another shop in San Francisco and specializes in antiquarian books. Owl and Company is the quintessential independent bookstore. This is why.

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining both walls. Ladders (even if they’re not sliding ones).

And all the old books even my heart could desire. Well–at least for a while.

There was even a vinyl record of Viennese Waltzes providing ambience.

And a wooden owl keeping watch.

Next up: Book Zoo and Issues, next-door neighbors. Much smaller than Owl and Company, Book Zoo has an eclectic, slightly outdated collection of books on adult topics, politics, and environmental issues. Their website has a very intriguing compilation of other independent bookstores in the area.

Issues is more of an independent magazine shop, although there were a few books as well as eclectic print materials (including a large variety of greeting cards).

Their outdoor sign was also unique and charming. Perhaps I ought to advertise this way?

Finally, Spectator Books. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, and the display in the front room is all new books, which I don’t find quite as interesting as used ones. But what’s special about this shop is that it’s bigger on the inside.

In this veritable labyrinth of books, hallways lead to rooms, which lead to more rooms, which lead to nooks and crannies, all lined floor to ceiling (and then some) with books. Note to self: I should never face the temptation of Spectator Books (or any shop like it) alone. If my mom hadn’t diligently dragged me out when our parking meter expired, I might still be there. I bought a copy of Princess Academy by Shannon Hale as a souvenir.

I hear there’s also a fifth bookshop on the avenue called Black Swan. Sadly, I didn’t make it that far. Guess I now have an excuse to make a return trip.

Why We Need Dystopian Literature

February 28, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 4 Comments

It’s funny that I, who can’t handle graphic descriptions in books and rarely watch movies rated higher than PG-13, consider dystopian literature one of my favorite genres.

What is dystopian literature? If you’re a fan of The Hunger Games or Divergent (which will soon be making its movie debut), you’re already familiar with it. Word history makes a little more sense of the genre’s odd name, though.

A utopia is a perfect world (deriving partly from the Greek word ευτοπiα, meaning “good land”). Flip that on its head and you get a dystopia (δυστοπια), a “bad land.” The setting is often a futuristic or fantastical version of our own world–but something is very, very wrong with it.

The exact type of wrongness varies. It can be a nationally televised event in which teenagers fight to the death. It can be an association of “firefighters” who work to burn books rather than save them. It can be a community that has rejected the burden of memory.

All disturbing scenarios, without question. But it is that very ability to unsettle that makes dystopian literature so powerful. It makes us understand consequences. Fahrenheit 451 portrays the book-burning “firefighters” as a consequence of culture-wide entertainment addiction. The cold extermination of humans in The Giver is a consequence of a society that chose painlessness and order over compassion and mercy.

The consequences are extreme, even grotesque, in these fantastical novels. But they raise questions for real life in the subtle and palatable way that only fiction can:

What are the problems with our own society? What will the consequences be? And what can we do to change things?

And that’s why I love dystopian novels–not because I’m a freak who loves to read about twisted worlds. I love these stories because I’m a person who wants to see the sickness of the world I live in and help prevent it from worsening past cure. I like these novels because they make me think, but more because they make me care. Maybe that’s why the genre has picked up so much popularity, especially in the turmoil of recent years.

So: pick up a dystopian novel and let it raise questions for you. If you need a place to get started, here’s a list of my top 5 dystopian novels:

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

“In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.” -Amazon.com

2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

File:Fahrenheit 451 1st ed cover.jpg

“Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.” -Amazon.com

3. The Giver by Lois Lowry

File:The Giver Cover.gif

“The story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community.” -Amazon.com

4. 1984 by George Orwell

File:1984first.jpg

“Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.” -Amazon.com

5. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

File:IslandOfDrMoreau.JPG

Although this is sometimes classified as a science fiction novel (and it does contain science fiction elements), its placement on an isolated island in our world, paired with its disturbing social commentary, make it a good example of dystopian literature as well. A power-crazed scientist makes humans out of animals, positioning himself as their god–but when the animals begin to regress, we must ask where the boundary between man and beast lies.

Have you read any of these books? Or do you have another favorite you’d add to the list?

Guess How Old I Am…

February 21, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 7 Comments

This week I turned a year older.

Hopefully I’m a little wiser than I was last year. I definitely have more experience to my name. And a lot of book copies in the garage with my name, too.

But staying young at heart is something I hope I’ll always strive for. So to celebrate the milestone, my mom and I went on adventure…to a land where giraffes grow on freeways.

Where coffee spells love:

Where my life philosophy is affirmed:

003

And most importantly, where there are no fewer than 4 independent bookstores on a single street. I will write a separate blog post reviewing said bookstores in the near future 🙂

This magical place was none other than Piedmont, California. My mom was a trooper, and the adventure was splendid. And so were the bookstores.

Can you guess how old I am now? No cheating if you’ve known me longer than 10 years!

We Have A Winner!

February 14, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 2 Comments

And…we have a winner!

Congratulations to Hillary, whose submission to the TIG on the Shelf contest won her a free e-book of The Illuminator’s Gift!

Enjoy your book love, Hillary!

And though, no, I did not enter the contest myself, I had a little fun taking #TIGontheshelf pictures…

I’ve always wanted to snuggle up on the white bookshelf in the corner, cozy between Sabatini and Scott. I would, however, feel a little awkward–not only because I’d be horrifically misshelved among the classics, but also because my book looks like a giraffe next to those mass markets!

So ah, this is home sweet home: my children’s lit shelf. And a pretty nice neighborhood it is, I must say. Levine, Jacques, Sage (with a bookmark still in it)…these are classics I treasured as a child and have never stopped loving.

Have a lovely, bookish long weekend!

If you didn’t get around to entering this contest, stay tuned–we’ll be having more fun with different kinds of contests in the coming months 🙂 You can find out more by following me on Facebook and/or Twitter (check out the sidebar)!

Book Love Contest: TIG On The Shelf

February 7, 2014 ~ Alina ~ Leave a comment

It’s February!

This month, love gets a lot of attention. Some people show love with chocolate, flowers, or sappy movies. Others love…books.

So to share some book love, I’m running my first-ever contest!

TIG On The Shelf

Step 1. Take a picture of your paperback copy of The Illuminator’s Gift among its companions on your bookshelf. (Alphabetical order admired, but not required. Creative arrangements welcome.)

Step 2. E-mail the picture to me at alinasayreauthor@gmail.com. If you’d like, you can also post your submissions to Twitter using the hashtag #TIGontheshelf.

Step 3. Your name will go in a drawing for a free e-book copy of The Illuminator’s Gift! You can either keep it for yourself or have it e-mailed to a recipient of your choice. Because what better way is there to show love than books?

Submit pictures by midnight on Thursday, February 13th. The winner will be announced on this blog on Friday, February 14th. All submissions will be featured on this website, with special attention given to the winner. By submitting pictures, you grant me permission to post them on this website, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, along with your first name.

So start snapping pictures! I can’t wait to see your shelves!

A Bucket of Daffodils

January 31, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 4 Comments

I know winter in California is nothing to complain about. But it’s still my least favorite season. December brings Christmas, but then the lights and the cookies and the carols are done. January wears on, and sweaters get thin in the elbows. Windshield wipers fray. I start to long for spring.

And then there are daffodils.

My mom brought me a miniature bucket of them for my office the other day. Yellow and sprightly, they brighten the whole room. I remember studying abroad in England and admiring the hardy bulbs, the only things daring to bloom in a stubbornly cold April.

British poet William Wordsworth, whose cottage we visited, admired them too. They filled his quaint garden, where I sat and jotted notes nearly four years ago.

He admired these flowers so much that one of his most famous poems is called “Daffodils.” It starts with these lines:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

I only really understood what he meant when I saw the fields of daffodils that sprawl over the English countryside while spring is still clinging to winter.

Maybe you need a cheerful sprig of yellow, a bucket of daffodils, in your life today. They’re flowers of hope. May they remind both of us that spring is coming.

A Book Lover Goes To The Movies

January 24, 2014 ~ Alina ~ 2 Comments

(Warning: this post contains spoilers.)

I saw more movies in theaters over the Christmas holidays than I normally do in six months. What can I say? It never rains, but it pours.

The three movies I saw were radically different from one another, but they were all based on books (at least at some level): The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Saving Mr. Banks, and Frozen. Some of what I saw disgusted me; other parts delighted me, but above all I couldn’t separate these movies from their books. I must be a book lover, even at the cinema.

Some of my moviegoing companions were entertained by my bookish reactions to these three films. We’ll see if you agree.

Film #1: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Rating: 3/10

Book fidelity rating: 2/10

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

J.R.R. Tolkien has been my first and most enduring literary love since I had The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings read to me at age 8. I knew I couldn’t miss this film, but I had to brace myself to see it, knowing I would probably come out incensed. Well…I was right.

Strong suits:

The Desolation of Smaug definitely pulled out all the budget stops. The CG, action sequences, and overall glamor of the movie were luxurious, particularly the scenes involving the dragon. There’s nothing they didn’t do with screen wizardry. I was also pleased with the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Smaug. He brought that evil dark-chocolate silkiness to the dragon’s words. In addition, there were a few book scenes that made it almost directly into the movie, and these had a poignant sweetness about them. One of my favorite scenes was the moment when Bilbo pops his head above the trees of Mirkwood and sees the treetops and butterflies. The other I really liked was the all-too-brief riddling between Bilbo and Smaug, when he identifies himself as “barrel-rider.”

Flops:

…mostly everything else. I’m not a fan of moviemakers rewriting books, especially great classic ones like The Hobbit. I’m also not a fan of splitting ONE book into THREE movies. Because then things like elf-dwarf-elf love triangles happen. And then I start laughing out loud in a quiet movie theater. And it’s embarrassing.

Film #2: Saving Mr. Banks

Rating: 10/10

Book fidelity rating: 10/10

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

Everything that was wrong with The Hobbit was right about Saving Mr. Banks. This movie is all about literary integrity…and the power of storytelling to redeem a shadowed past. Though I only read Mary Poppins once as a child and I remember being more frightened than enchanted by the austere British nanny, I came home from Saving Mr. Banks and re-watched the Disney movie, suddenly enthralled.

Strong suits:

Everything. The acting was top-notch; the storytelling, graceful. It had the poignancy of one of my other favorite movies, Finding Neverland. Of course I laughed at the prim, snarky quips of P.L. Travers and the Disney underlings who had to work with her. But the film also brought me to tears on no fewer than four occasions with its artful yet honest depiction of the childhood scars that carry over into adulthood. I’ve never sobbed through the song “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” before. But if you see this movie, you might too.

I especially appreciated this movie’s redemptive theme. One of my pet soapboxes (as you probably know if you’ve read The Illuminator’s Gift) is the power of art as both calling and catharsis. By revisiting our own dark places through writing (or painting or moviemaking or composing), we not only find healing for ourselves, but share it with others as well. That was what this film communicated through the relationship of a hardened English writer and a Hollywood film mogul. And those were the scenes where I bawled like a baby.

Flops:

There were a few ends left a little too dangly for my taste at the end. What role did Aunt Ellie play in Ginty’s later life? How did Disney’s not inviting Travers to the film premiere affect their ongoing relationship? What happened to Travers in later life?

Film #3: Frozen

Rating: 8/10

Book fidelity rating: 1/10 (though for once, this might be a good thing…you should really go read “The Snow Queen,” just to see what I mean)

Frozen (2013)

I love fairy tales, and I’m almost always a sucker for a good animated movie. Frozen didn’t disappoint.

Strong suits:

This is the most beautiful animated film I’ve ever seen. Not just for its incredibly realistic visuals of shiny, transparent ice or powdery snow, either. Even the imaginary things in the movie were stunningly beautiful, from Elsa’s creation of her ice castle to her diaphanous blue cape. Some of the swirls and the color palette even reminded me of the cover art from The Illuminator’s Gift! Even more than the animation, though, I loved the messages of this movie and the way it debunks some longstanding Disney myths. If I ever have daughters, I’d want them to see that not even princesses wake up with perfect hair in the morning, that love at first sight doesn’t exist, and that not all true love has to come from a romantic hero. The heroines in this movie are strong while still remaining feminine, but more importantly, they stand by each other as sisters, demonstrating true courage and sacrifice.

Flops:

Okay, so the storytelling got a bit lost in the woods. Some of the character depth and complexity came at the cost of a linear storyline like that of Tangled. On the other hand, it’s based (very loosely) on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” which is about the most madcap fairy tale in existence, so with a story basis like that, it did pretty well. I could have done quite well without the character of Olaf. His toilet humor didn’t add anything, and his character and even animation didn’t fit with the rest of the movie.

Have you seen these films? Did you think they were true to their books? Which one was your favorite?