Elijah David

Someone recently asked me about some pronunciations of character names and such in Albion Academy . Although I didn't include a pronunciation guide in the book, I recently put one together in anticipation of the audio book entering production. What follows is a rough guide to how some of the more unusual names and magical phrases in the book are pronounced (some are pulled from other languages, so the pronunciation here is an Anglicized approximation; I apologize for any errors). Aella – AY-ell-a Akachi – uh-KA-chee Alamar – AL-uh-mar Albion – AL-bee-un Albrione – al-BREE-own Ambrosius – am-BRO-zyus Ana – AH-na Anaia – uh-NI-uh Asgard – AZ-guard Athanval – AH-thahn-vahl Bechronian – beh-KROW-nee-an Beclys – beh-CLIS Belchor – bell-CORE Bifröst – BUY-frost Blaise – blaze Bryn – brin Brynhildr – brihn-HIL-dur Caerleon – CAIR-lee-own Cauda Pavonis – CAW-duh pa-VO-nis chana – chah-NA Colonomos – KO-lo-no’-mos Corrine – core-IN Corvin – CORE-vin D’Artagnan – DAR-tan-yan Darity – DARE-...

There are two main shelves I wanted to include in the library tour that didn't make it into the original photo shoot. First, the writing reference shelf. This is all of my books on writing craft (along with the dictionaries and a few books of church skits). Gardner's The Art of Fiction is worthwhile. Then, there's the bedroom shelf. I featured this shelf in my reading goals post at the start of the year but it's changed a bit since then, so let's revisit it. (There may be a few books here that were already shown in previous library posts, but that's because they migrated between pictures. There are also a few books that migrated from this shelf to the library between pictures, and thus are not shown at all. Poor neglected things.) Books from giveaways, books from Christmas, and nonfiction. Fantasy, lit fic, mystery, and ongoing series reads. Currently in progress: The Mysterious Affair at Styles , The Fact of a Body , The Great Divorce...

Welcome back to the bookshelf tour. No lengthy intro, just more and more books! This first picture is not from the alphabetical order. It's the short stack of books that's set to replace books from the bedroom shelf as they're read. Riddle-Master is a reread, as is Beauty . The rest are books I just need to read. The Ns, from Kim Newman to Mary Norton. (Notice the complete, chronologically ordered Old Kingdom/Abhorsen series. I still need to read Nix's Keys to the Kingdom.) Also, there's Charlie Bone still to be read in there. So many series I've yet to start. All of the Borrowers books, along with the Firebirds anthologies and the Dragonlover's Guide to Pern . Again, I still need to read most of these. Uprooted , Robert C. O'Brien, and more. No, I haven't been tempted to reread Uprooted a half dozen times since I read it. Why do you ask? The Crossroads trilogy, Auralia's Colors , and Ovid. The Magic and the ...

I have recently been on a The Silver Chair  kick, thanks to talking about the upcoming film adaptation with some of the mods and members of NarniaWeb . It started with giving the audio book a second listen, after not going back to it for years because I hated Jeremy Northam's take on Puddleglum (read: it wasn't Tom Baker). Then I followed that up with the Focus on the Family radio adaptation, as well as the BBC Radio version. Due to that, this month's ThrowBook Thursday is a bit of a comparative review, taking a look at the different versions of the story. The Silver Chair is perennially in my favorites of the Narnia books (to be fair, I love all of them), and with the production of the film adaptation moving forward, I'm hoping the production team really gets  Narnia as a whole, not just this story. The movies till now have had a mixed vision of Narnia, falling somewhere between Lewis' Narnia and the average fantasy world of Hollywood (usually on the latter ...

This is a book tag that I'm nabbing (and modifying) from Cait at Paper Fury (who nabbed and modified it from #bookstagram). I'll try to go with more recent books in cases where there are many answers I could give. 1. Chocolate Cake: A dark book you absolutely love Hmm . . . I don't usually "love" dark books. But V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic series is one of the darker I've read recently, and I did love those. (Note: They feature vulgarity, violence, and the occasional mostly tasteful scene of human love-making, so if those aren't your cup of tea, or you're like me and appreciate knowing beforehand, this is your warning.) 2. Vanilla Cake: A light read I just poked through my reading challenge for this year on Goodreads and . . . I've not read many books this year I'd deem "light" (and truth to tell, a lot more of them are dark than I'd have given myself credit for. I still put SoM as my answer for dark books.) ...

Welcome back to the Mossflower library tour. We left off in the tail-end of the Gs last time, which means this installment picks up with the Grimm brothers. Lots of myth and folklore on this shelf. Moving on from Beowulf (just kidding; we never move on from Beowulf ), there's Tony Hillerman's Navajo mysteries. These books are infused with Southwestern Native American/Amerindian/First Nations culture, including folklore and religious beliefs. Also, Robin Hobb lurks at the end of the shelf. This shelf seems to exemplify my reading habits: literary non-fic, sci-fi and fantasy, mystery, with a dash of poetry for good measure. Robert Holdstock ( Mythago Wood is a must-read!), Hosseini (still need to read this one), and lots of Bunnicula. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of books? The Vashta Nerada, that's who. Count the shadows. From Howe to Hugo to Jacques. Yes, that is a copy of Fractured Fairy Tales . Yes, the Rocky and Bullwinkle  "F...