Inkstinct is a treasure hunt of a blog, where the find is a good story.
We decided to start this blog after complaining endlessly of the difficulty in finding a good read. Both of us had grown up around books, so we knew there were a few good ones out there. It just seemed so hard to find new ones in a market flooded with zombie survivalist guides and vampire romance. This blog is not about either of those.
This blog is meant to be an honest to goodness review of every book we can get our hands on. This may get messy, since that means bad mouthing a few books. Still, it is in the pursuit of excellence, which is all we ask for. We promise to post reviews and suggestions for anyone who might be interested to look. We are just as interested in finding a great read for our readers(or even more so) as ourselves!
About Us:
Hi! I'm Meg, the crazy artist/animator/writer. I know. That's a lot of hats to wear. I grew up in Southern California, where the library was always the smart, read free, alternative to amusement parks and malls( both of which I love). I can also be bought for tea parties and retro cartoons. Especially English tea parties and Batman the Animated Series.
My reading tastes range from comic books, fantasy, ghost stories, historical fiction, horror, to mystery. One genre I tend to neglect is Western. We'll see if I can get past my prejudices and add one to the list.
Favorite Children's Book: The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash, By Tinka Hakes Noble. Illustrated by Steven Kellog
Leandra
[lee-an-druh]
–noun
1. A full-time college student.
2. Someone who shelves books at a library.
3. A person who suffers from bibliophilia, glossophilia, and an addiction to coffee.
Well hi there! As you can see, books are a big part of my life. This love affair started when I began reading at age five, and continues through to present day, which finds me working at a library part-time. I’m surrounded by books all day, and like to think that I have pretty good taste when it comes to a satisfying yarn. There was a time when good books were not so hard to find, but with this onslaught of zombies, vampires, and supernatural teen romances, good books are becoming inkstinct.
My favorite genres include: fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, and mysteries. More often than not, you will find me in the children's section of any bookstore or library, perusing the shelves of juvenile fiction. I also peruse the young adult shelves, but with slightly less enthusiasm. It took me a while to branch out to my own age group, but I've finally started journeying into books for the older crowd.
Favorite Children's Book: Madeline, written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans.
Favorite Children's Book: Madeline, written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans.
Ludwig Bemelmans was an Austrian immigrant who was disgusted with the Prussian style educational system he grew up with in Germany, a system which merely created the kind of "useful idiots" the National Socialists used to usher in the Third Reich. He began the Madeline series in 1939. The series is thus a retreat into a world Bemelmans loved, the world of Catholic Paris, the "Paris of Saint Louis" as it was referred to then. In the 1930s, it was very common to see Catholic school girls or boys (educated separately) walking in two straight rows through the streets of the City of Lights, usually with a priest or nun leading them during their recreations. Bemelmans tried to capture the ambiance of civilization, order, and security that the city offered, just at the very moment of its tragic fall into the hands of the German socialist army. Just as Bemelman's retreats into this vision of Catholic Paris, so do modern children today as they walk with Madeline through the Bois de Boulogne, the parvis of Notre-Dame, or the Jardin des Plantes. The world of Madeline is safe: she is free to indulge her precocious nature and intellectual curiosity about the things around her. Today, children cannot so much as walk on a sidewalk without fear of abduction or gang attacks and are forced to imprison themselves indoors, because their pathetic, ugly, American cities are places of danger and despair. Madeline, unlike her modern counterparts with their prostitute's platform shoes, mini-skirts, make-up, and fish-net stockings, is allowed to be a simple girl in a dress and a hat. She is not a "brat," a "mean girl" or a pornographic Manga girl designed to arouse Japanese men on the subways of Tokyo. Bemelmans celebrates the innocence of a time and place destroyed by the dehumanizing wages of socialism. And that place is as enduring, and endearing, as Madeline herself.
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