Make Mine an Indie: Alma Books

This week I am running A Way into YA here on the blog; a series of guest posts on where to start with young adult literature, and to tie in with that I thought I'd try to make the Make Mine an Indie posts bookending the week focus on publishers who have produced some quality YA titles.

 

I've known about Alma Books for a while, primarily because they're based in Richmond, the area I grew up in, but also because they sent me Sketcher by Roland Watson - Grant a while ago and I didn't finish it for which I heartily apologise because it was great and I am going to finish it pretty much as soon as I get home. It's next, I promise. 

The thing I like most about Alma is their tagline - 'A Publisher with a Soul'. For me the ideas of joy, love, passion and soul are the most associated with reading and I think this has to remain the case if we are to keep the love of books and reading alive in society today so I'm excited to keep discovering publishers and booksellers who seem to share this idea! 

This is directly from the About section of Alma's website, but honestly I don't think I could have written it better myself. Head here to find out more about them!

Alma – which is Spanish for “soul” – is a publisher that regards a book as an aesthetic artefact rather than as a mass-produced commodity. The company’s whole emphasis lies on quality over quantity, all the way from choosing projects for publication to creating the physical look and feel of each volume. Alma works intimately with authors and translators to develop the best possible finished scripts, and displays a passionate commitment to the kind of professional editing, copy-editing and proofreading that is dying out elsewhere.

They publish a multitude of different things as well as a heavy amount of translated fiction and non-fiction titles. During my research I'm finding it difficult to discover many independent publishers whose main focus is YA, but a few of Alma's titles really intrigued me leading to me choosing to feature them today. There are many other titles in their catalogue that I'm excited by, but for the purposes of this week I'm going to just focus on the YA.

Some things I'm excited to read:

Sketcher by Roland Watson- Grant

From the Alma Books website:

Nine-year-old “Skid” Beaumont’s family is stuck in the mud. Following his father’s decision to relocate and build a new home, based on a drunken vision that New Orleans would rapidly expand eastwards into the wetlands as a result of the Seventies oil boom, Skid and his brothers grow up in a swampy area of Louisiana. But the constructions stop short, the dream fizzles out, and the Beaumonts find themselves sinking in a soggy corner of 1980s Cold War America. As things on the home front get more complicated, Skid learns of his mother’s alleged magic powers and vaguely remembers some eerie stories surrounding his elder brother Frico.

These, as well as early events that Skid saw with his own eyes, convince him that Frico has a gift to fix things by simply sketching them. For the next few years, Skid’s self-appointed mission to convince his brother to join him in his lofty plan to change their family’s luck and the world they live in will lead to even more mystery and high drama in the swamp. Atmospheric, uplifting and deeply moving, Sketcher – Roland Watson-Grant’s stunning debut – is a novel about the beauty of life no matter how broken it is.

Skid by Roland Watson - Grant

From the Alma Books website:

Having left the Louisiana swamp behind, the Beaumonts are finding it hard to settle into the big city. As he unpacks the boxes after their move to Eastern New Orleans, the now sixteen-year old Skid finds a diary which had belonged to his older brother Frico. Among various other family secrets that emerge from this discovery is the startling revelation that “Skid” is a hoodoo word of ominous significance. This throws Skid’s mind into turmoil and prompts him to launch into a quest for the real meaning of his name and the very foundations of his own being, an adventure which will pit him against his own brother and lead him to encounter Claire, a mysterious girl who seems to hold the answers to some of his questions.

Heart-warming, funny and poignant, Skid – the second volume in Roland Watson-Grant’s Trilogy of the Swamp after the critically acclaimed Sketcher – continues the exploration of a young man’s coming of age in today’s broken world.

Madame Tussaud's Apprentice by Kathleen Benner Duble

From the Alma Books website:

Célie Rosseau is a talented young artist who, along with her partner Algernon, resorts to petty thieving on the streets of Paris to survive. It is 1789: rumours of rebellion against the monarchy are starting to spread in the capital, and the two of them get involved in the idealistic revolutionary fervour. But when she is caught stealing from the brother of the King himself, Célie is saved only thanks to her drawing skills and the intercession of Marie Tussaud, the famous waxworks artist and a favourite at the French court, who decides to employ her.

Suddenly Célie finds herself whisked away from the tumult of Paris to the safety and opulence of Versailles. This raises a difficult moral dilemma for the young lady who had until recently dreamt of overthrowing the very people who now treat her with kindness: should she compromise her ideals and risk losing Algernon – the man she loves – or should she stay true to the cause of the poor and the revolution?


Caramel Hearts by Elizabeth Rose Murray

From the Alma Books website:

Liv Bloom’s life is even more complicated than that of your average fourteen-year-old: her father walked out on the family when she was young, her mother is in a recovery centre for alcoholics, and her older sister is struggling to step into Mum’s shoes. The only person she can turn to is her best friend Sarah, who gets out of scrapes at school and is a constant source of advice and companionship. One day Liv discovers a book of recipes written in her mum’s handwriting, which sets her off on a journey towards self-discovery and reconciliation – but a theft, a love rivalry and a school bully are just some of the many obstacles on the way.

Structured around real cake recipes, Caramel Hearts is a coming-of-age novel about love, disappointment and hope, and discovering the true value of friends and family, no matter how dysfunctional they are.



The last one sounds particularly exciting! Alma also publish a gorgeous range of Classics, check out their website to see their Autumn catalogue.

You can find Alma Books online at www.almabooks.com. 

The Make Mine an Indie series so far:

And Other Stories
Atlantic Books
Nobrow Press

Be sure to follow throughout the week for some brilliant guest posts full of Young Adult recommendations from across the genres!

I'm also still in search of lovely donations for a big YA giveaway at the end of the week! If you'd like to donate a book (can be preloved or new) or bookish gift type things please fill in this form. 

A Way Into YA

photo courtesy of Rina Reads Books

If you've been a long time reader of this blog you will have seen me be suspicious about YA, then bemoan my lack of reading it and then gradually begin to dip my toes in the water and discover some titles I've really enjoyed. Having felt this way myself I can now say that I really don't think anybody should worry about reading Young Adult titles when they're no longer in the age bracket that these books may have originally been targeted for - as we're always saying in the blogosphere, read whatever you want and never be ashamed!

That said I still feel very wary of YA as a genre purely because there is so much choice and beyond the hyped titles and things that get made into movies I'm never really sure where to start. Also I got a bit caught up in the 'everything having a cover like the Twilight books' thing and decided the whole genre must be about sparkly vampires. I'm sorry. When I mentioned this on twitter (the overwhelm, not the sparkly vampires) and asked if anybody would be interested in guest posting their recommendations for me the response was a resounding yes and so this week I will have a post for you each day with a different blogger telling you about a few of their favourite titles. At the end of the week I will wrap up with a little about some of my own favourites plus a few awesome resources from the YA community!

If you're wanting to read more YA but unsure of where to start then I hope this helps, and if you're a dedicated reader then I hope you'll discover some fantastic new books.

At the end of the week I'd love to do a big giveaway of lots of YA books to really encourage people towards diving into the genre. I will be providing a couple of prizes myself, but if you'd like to donate a prize, be it a book of your own you've finished reading and are willing to pass to someone else, book related swag, or 'a book of your choice up to x value' kind of prize, please fill in the form. 

All of your help towards making this a great event is massively appreciated. 

Bout of Books: Day 1 and 2

I was going to do daily wrap ups and page counts and stuff and then I felt stressed just thinking about it so I decided not to. Instead I'm going to post when I want and what I want and only read things I'm feeling really motivated to read regardless of deadlines etc. Just for this week. That's the point of Bout of Books anyway, right?

Day one was difficult. It was the last day of our long weekend off together and so I didn't get a lot of chance for reading. I don't think it helped that my books - I was floating between The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw and Happiness by Matthieu Ricard - while both great, weren't really propelling me to get engrossed in reading. Although I was enjoying it, I eventually decided to return The Bookshop that Floated Away to the library unfinished. There was a middle section that was a little bit odd and just not really keeping me involved so I moved on to Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins in the evening which was a fantastic choice.

I also took part in the Fictional World Travel challenge for the first day. I posted my entry on Instagram, and here are the countries I am fictionally planning to visit:

From top to bottom: France, Tahiti, India, Brazil, Paris (so France again), Russia (Moscow specifically), and Nigeria. 

Day two got off to a better start primarily because I decided to stick with Lola. There still wasn't much chance to read as I have the boys on my own all day Tuesdays and have decided to try to reduce their TV time to less than an hour a day, meaning I don't get much of my own stuff done between 6am and 7pm! That said we had a fantastic day. In the morning we headed to the library for baby bounce and rhyme and spent a while there reading stories and playing with the toys. On the way home Sam slept and I let Ben go at his own pace as it was only lightly raining and he had wellies on, so a fifteen minute walk took fifty minutes. During the afternoon we did loads of crafts and baked an amazing blackberry buttermilk cake with the blackberries we foraged on Monday. I did manage to finish Lola and the Boy Next Door during the afternoon and oh my goodness that book is phenomenal. I had happy tears at the end of it. 

While I was at the library I picked up I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, based on her being on almost everyone's Auto Buy Author posts for Top Ten Tuesday and also a little bit because the book has gorgeous orange pages. I'm feeling good about including it in my reading plans for the week. 

After finishing Lola I've decided to stick with reading exactly what I want to read and picked up The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey & Peter Gross which my sister got from her library and lent to me,along with Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love and Fables: Happily Ever After. 

I wanted to do the challenge for today as well but it doesn't look like it's up as of me writing this post (8pm Tuesday evening) so maybe I'll include it in my post for Wednesday. Hopefully I'll get a few more pages read this evening - I'd like to make a decent dent in The Unwritten, so far I'm still on Bill Willingham's introduction! 

If I were statsing, my stats so far would be thus:

Books finished: 1 (Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins) 

Books abandoned: 1 (The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw)

Freddo frogs consumed: 2

Other snacks: hummus & pitta, a curlywurly, unadmittable amount of blackberry cake. 

Blogs visited: Bingeing on Books, Lit Addicted Brit and about six others I visited in the morning of the first day and don't remember, I'm sorry! 

How's your readathon going so far? 

*all links are affiliate with Indiebound.org. If you purchase through them I will receive a small commission for which I will be very grateful. 

Top Ten Auto Buy Authors

This Top Ten Tuesday topic ties in quite nicely with last weeks topic that I wanted to do and missed; the top ten authors you've read the most from, so without much further ado, in no particular order here are the ten authors on my auto-buy list.

Scarlett Thomas - you're shocked, right? Scarlett is pretty much the only author whose books I must buy on the day that they come out. I recently attended a signing for her newest book, The Seed Collectors and am still in the middle of her book about writing, Monkeys with Typewriters, which is super inspiring. I will read anything she writes, mostly because all of her books are totally different and amazing.

Neil Gaiman - Obviously. Everything that I've read it immense and amazing and although I may not read them all immediately like I do with Scarlett Thomas, I do buy them pretty much straight away and have a big collection on my keeper shelf.

Joanne Harris - I've loved Joanne Harris for a long time. The Chocolat books (Chocolat, The Lollipop Shoes, Peaches for Monsieur le Cure) are my favourites but I have read most of what she's written and although I haven't bought one of her books for a while they do automatically go onto my wishlist, which is pretty much the same thing in this year of the book buying ban!

Rainbow Rowell - Do I really need to explain this? I'm well on my way to having read all of Rainbow's books more than once and they are all so amazing that I just want to fill my house with related merchandise so I can think about them all the time. She is the best at writing love stories that don't make me feel sick.

Sarah J. Maas - A recent addition, but after reading Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire in very quick succession a couple of months ago how could she not be on this list? Everyone else in the world has read A Court of Thorns and Roses and I really want to! I'm hoping somebody will take pity on me for Christmas because I obviously can't buy it myself!

Terry Pratchett - this makes me sad because obviously there is only one more of his books for me to auto buy but oh I definitely will be. For years the latest Pratchett was my go-to Christmas present for my dad - after this year I'm going to have to actually be creative. His death earlier this year was a massive loss for the world.

J. Courtney Sullivan - although I didn't like The Engagements as much as I did Maine and Commencement I'd still put her on this list. Maybe even more so since I reread Maine during the first Re-Readathon and it was still as amazing as I remembered!

Kirsty Logan - a recent addition, but after The Gracekeepers I will read all the things she ever publishes. What a beautiful novel.

Elizabeth Peters - Ah Elizabeth Peters. I love the Amelia Peabody series, which my mum introduced me to years ago. What's not to love about detective fiction, hilarity and Egyptology? Amazing books, and her other series aren't bad either!

Bill Willingham - Mr. Fables himself. After having loved Fables for so long now there's no chance I'm not reading everything else Willingham has ever touched. Amazing stuff.

Bout of Books Sign up and Goals

It's Bout of Books time again which makes me the most excited! As was the case back at the beginning of the year, it's running just before the second ReReadathon and they complement each other really nicely. Bout of Books pushes me to finish up all the things I'm currently reading and then I get to immerse myself in rereads for the ReReadathon!

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Basically Bout of Books is just a really really fun week and a great chance to discover new blogs, chat to new people and even do some reading! If you want to join the fun check out the above link to sign up. 

My goals for Bout of Books are thus: 

• Read a bit every day
• Do at least three challenges
• Finish one book
• Visit a new to me blog each day
• Take part in a twitter chat (?? If it works out time and kids wise)

I don't know what my TBR will be yet but it will probably include some bits of the following:

• Fishbowl  by Matthew Glass - I need to finish this one up because I'm really enjoying it and want to write about it 
• Happiness by Matthieu Ricard - because it's gorgeous and very inspiring. 
• The Unwritten vol 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey & Peter Gross
• Fables: Happily Ever After by Bill Willingham & Mark Buckingham
• Sketcher by Roland Watson - Grant - because I started it ages ago, was really enjoying it and then just never finished it. 
• The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw - another one I'm in the middle of, and it's about bookshops and the river. I'll probably try to finish this. 
• Scarlet by Marissa Meyer - for Brittany's readalong. This isn't scheduled til September but I really enjoyed Cinder and can't wait to find out what happens next!

Affiliate links, if you purchase through these links I will get a small commission and be very grateful.

Are you taking part in Bout of Books? What will you be reading this week? 

Make Mine an Indie: Nobrow Press

This is the third in my series of posts in preparation for my year of buying indie only in 2016. The last two weeks have seen me feature the work of And Other Stories and Atlantic Books, and this week is the turn of London based publisher Nobrow.

This week is particularly exciting for me for a few reasons; firstly Nobrow are publishers of art and illustration and as such their website is a beautiful place to explore, and secondly they have a children's imprint, Flying Eye Books. Particularly exciting as I've been looking for new awesome books for my kids for a while!

Nobrow was founded in 2008 by Sam Arthur and Alex Spiro, ex students of St Martins with the vision of producing ground-breaking art and narrative with environmental consciousness central to its vision. Until the middle of 2014 they also had a shop in Central London. Today you can purchase all of their books, stationery, including an impressive range of gift wrap, and other awesome stuff via their website. 

Firstly some Flying Eye books I'm excited to read with the boys:

The Little Gardener by Emily Hughes 

From the Flying Eye website:

There was once a little gardener and his garden meant everything to him. He worked hard, very hard, but he was just too little (or at least he felt he was).

In this beautifully gentle tale Emily Hughes, the celebrated author of Wild, departs from the larger than life Wild-girl of her debut to pursue a little-r than life Gardener, in a tale that teaches us just how important it is to persist and try, no matter what the odds.

With ever delicately woven tapestries of illustrated magic, Hughes once again transports us to a world not unlike our own, but still brimming with fantasy and wonder.

Mr Tweed's Good Deeds by Jim Stoten

From the Flying Eye website:

Mr. Tweed sets out on his afternoon stroll, but soon finds some friends in need of his help. Can you come to his aid and help him find what they are looking for? Hidden in pages of vibrant colour and highly detailed illustrations lie a variety of different objects waiting to be discovered! Stoten’s wonderfully whimsical designs will enchant young readers into this fun and quirky world where counting is made easy.

Jim Stoten is an illustrator based in London, UK. Over the last several years Jim’s unique style and fun illustrations have been commissioned for an impressive list of clients including MTV, Habitat, Levi’s, Urban Outfitters and The Guardian. He frequently exhibits his work in galleries around the globe.

And a couple from Nobrow Small Press:

Death's Cocktail Party by Nishant Choksi

From the Nobrow website:

(Former British Prime Minister) Harold Mcmillan once remarked that ‘memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set’. Nishant Choksi with his first release through Nobrow Press, Death’s Cocktail Party, however, has imaginatively put the two together.

Taking the form of a series of slapstick vignettes, Death’s Cocktail Party imagines how the Grim Reaper would host his own high brow soiree, topping up guests drinks with dynamite and substituting polite small-talk for cannibal friendly canapés.

A positively dark tale, bound to amuse more than intimidate, Choksi concocts his ever more ridiculous and wild scenarios using brushes, ink and just 2 spot colours. Printed on Rives printmakers paper and available in a limited run of 100 copies Choksi promises to ‘take us to the darkest of all party venues for one last drink’

The Hunter by Joe Sparrow

From the Nobrow website:

One aristocratic hunter is about to face his toughest quarry: a mythical beast composed of all his vanguished trophies!

In a time centuries before our own, one arrogant hunter has grown bored of sport. Only the legends of a mythical beast excite him now, but when he goes hunting for the creature he quickly discovers that he is outmatched. Because this beast is not any mythical animal but is composed of all the hunted pre killed in the past, and it is most certainly out for revenge.

You can find Nobrow on twitter @nobrowpress, via their Facebook page, Tumblr, on Pinterest or through their website.

Have you read any of these beautiful books? Let me know which independent publishers (UK or non) you're excited about in the comments!

What I've Read and What I'm ReadingI

A while ago I pretty much stopped writing full reviews of anything but review copies and books I really really love, but I feel like I don't really talk about what I'm reading all that much anymore. It seems to be mostly just lists of things I've liked in the past which is all fine and good but I thought this would be a good way to keep up with what's going on in my reading life!

NW by Zadie Smith has been sitting on my shelf since just after it came out and I'm really glad I finally got to it. Zadie Smith writes London so well, and this is a great story about whether where you're born determines what you achieve in life or whether it's all down to how hard you're willing to work. It focuses on four people from the same area, all of whom are vaguely connected but also not - their stories sometimes cross and sometimes kind of run parallel and sometimes you're not sure you really know what's going on at all. Not a five star read for me but very good and thoroughly enjoyable writing. 

Fables: Cubs in Toyland, Snow White & Camelot by Bill Willingham. I gave up talking about the Fables series after about books five because I really don't want to spoil one of my favourite series for those who've yet to read it, but it's still great. I'm two books from the end now (sobs) and epic things are still happening to all kinds of well known fairytale entities. I continue to love the way that the characters are reinvented and the stories twisted and the artwork continues to be beautiful. 

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan is absolutely bloody fantastic and everyone should read it. Set in a fantasy world that's more water than land it focuses on Callanish and North; one a 'landlocker' with a mysterious past and the other a circus girl who dances and lives with a bear. It's beautifully written and I loved the characters. I did want to know more about the world it was set in, and there was one thing that I felt was a little underdeveloped but overall the suspense and intrigue of the story was really gripping. I've already added her other books to my wishlist!

Ms Marvel: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson. I don't think I need to say much about this because everybody else in the whole world has already talked about it and loved it and it absolutely lives up to all of the hype. I'm ridiculously excited to read the next volume. 

Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Everybody in the world has read this except me, but Brittany is hosting a readalong of the Lunar Chronicles series ending up with Winter, the latest book which is published in Autumn so I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally read the series and so far it's not disappointed! I'm absolutely racing through Cinder and will be on to the next book waaaay ahead of schedule!

Playful Learning: Develop Your Child's Sense of Joy and Wonder by Mariah Bruehl. I'm not very far through this yet but I'm hoping it will inspire me to carry on with the educating through play and kind of by accident way I've been doing it so far. Anything that provides inspiration for how to add more creativity and less technology to the day to day lives of my children is a great thing!

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I literally picked this up today but I love Ishiguro, he's one of my favourite authors, and so far this has ogres and Romans and seems great. I'm excited.

The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw. I haven't actually started yet but I'm imminently going to pick it up. It's kind of a bit research for the potential bookshop we may open sometime in the future and a bit been wanting to read it since I read about it in The Bookshop Book, but it's about a bookshop on a boat and I'm just really intrigued. 

Have you read any of these? What did you think? And what are you reading at the moment?