Top Ten Tuesday - Books That Will Make You Read The Whole Day Away

The Dry - Jane Harper

Come Sit By Me - Thomas Hoobler

Hell's Horizon - Darren Shan

Everything Everything - Nicola Yoon

Gravedigger - Michael - Israel Jarvis

Geek Girl Head Over Heels - Holly Smale

The Art Of Being Normal - Lisa Williamson

Nameless Chronicle #2 Ascent - M.T.Miller

The Food Of Love - Amanda Prowse

Sweetpea - C.J Skuse

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke And The Bookish

Top Ten Tuesday - Best Books I Read In 2015

Most books I have read this year have been the best, but here are 10 off the top of my head.

 Geek Girl Picture Perfect - Holly Smale

Geek Girl All That Glitters- Holly Smale

Geek Girl Geek Drama - Holly Smale

Geek Girl Model Misfit - Model Misfit

All I Know Now - Carrie Hope Fletcher

The One Thing - Marci Lyn Curtis

Everyday - David Levithan

Come Sit By Me - Thomas Hoobler

Memphis Hoodoo Murders - Kathryn Rogers

Outspoken - Lora Richardson

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over on The Broke And The Bookish

Guest Post - Come Sit By Me Book Tour

 

 

A Books Eternal Glory is very excited to welcome a guest this week. Today we have Thomas Hoobler, the author of Come Sit By Me who wanted to talk about the research he conducted to write the novel. 

"Research I did for Come Sit By Me

For a novel, there are two kinds of research you can do. The first one is to find out as much as you can about the setting, the time, the background, and the subject generally. A good example of this kind is the research my wife and I have done for our mysteries that are set in 18th-century Japan. When people ask if we have ever been to Japan, we say we have visited the Japan that we write about the only way you can: in books.

You have to be careful that this kind of research doesn’t turn your book into an encyclopedia article. You have to use it only as part of the main thing: the story. It’s a place where your characters live.

When I decided to write a book about a school shooting, I read a book titled Columbine by Dave Cullen. Cullen is a reporter who investigated the shooting at a high school in Columbine, Colorado. He was very thorough and I learned just about as much as I could about the school and the two shooters. But when I finished, I decided that wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to write. I also decided that the book didn’t answer the most important question of all: Why did they do it?

 

So I used the second kind of research: I used my imagination.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t do any research. I had gone to high school. I later taught in a school. In both places, I observed the students around me. I drew conclusions about what motivated people. I saw how certain people were rejected by others, and I understood how that made them feel because I myself experienced rejection. I observed how some people lead others, and saw that some of these leaders were not (in my opinion) good people. I saw that people who were otherwise good shunned people who were unpopular. I saw that people can be cruel and thoughtless. All of this was research for writing about a high school and the students in my book. Anybody who writes stories about people has done this kind of research. Let me add that nobody in any schools I attended ever shot up the place. In addition, none of the characters in my book are exactly like any students I personally knew.

 

When I wrote the book, I felt that I had a character down on paper when he or she acted the way I knew real people behave. When that happens, the characters start to do things by themselves. That’s when you know you’ve done your research.

I think I should mention one other book I used as research. I really struggled to find the right voice for Caleb, the shooter. (If you want to know how a dead person can speak, you have to read the book.) I don’t think I ever knew anybody who was quite so damaged as Caleb. Yet I didn’t want to make him a monster who acts without reason. That would be a cop-out. So I read a story by Nikolai Gogol titled “Diary of a Madman.” That helped me find a way to give Caleb his voice."

 

 

 

 

I just want to thank Kellie Sheridan who initially contacted me about joining the book tour and for also helping set the date and for providing all of the material used in this post. I look forward to seeing the other posts that come as a result of this book tour.

 

 

 

 

 

Come Sit By Me - Thomas Hoobler

I had the greatest pleasure to gain access to this book. Thank you to the publisher for granting me the right to read and review this book.


Title: Come Sit By Me
Author: Thomas Hoobler
Publisher: Booktrope
Publication Date: July 15th 2015
Available Editions: EBook




Netgalley Synopsis:

The boy who shot seven people in the school library is dead. But did his secrets die with him?
Something terrible happened at Hamilton High last year, and those who survived don't want to relive the past. But Paul has just arrived, and gets the same locker that the shooter used. He wants to know what really happened...and you know what curiosity did to the cat.




Review:

In all honesty when I came upon this book on Netgalley I had to request the right to review purely down to the description and the cover itself. To anyone who had watched American Horror Story: Murder House will be able to see why. To anyone who hasn't seen AHS:MH what I'm referring to it Tate Langdon played by Evan Peters who shot and killed 15 students in Westfield High, the librarian survived but was paralysed. A few of the students he shot and killed died in the library which is also where those murdered in this book die. The art work for the book also resembled Tate/Evan from AHS:MH because of the face pain, Tate is shown in several scenes to be walking through school wearing similar face paint. None the less for the sake of review and interest I went ahead and requested the right to read and review the book.




Lets start with what I loved about the book shall we? Even though I believed it to be a basic story based around a version of Tate I was deceived. This book follows Paul, a boy who moves to a new school from New York. It's great to get to know Pauls back ground and reasoning's for moving and there is never a moment where I had lost track of the moment, everything tied together perfectly. There were several characters but never so many that you would lose track of who was who and what happened to who and I'm grateful for that. You could say there were some secret messages throughout the book but they aren't for me to spoil or even interpret for you, everyone understands things differently.




Picking up on the character aspect once again, each character attracted my attention because they were all relevant to the story and not just passers by. The story mostly focus' around Paul who is just a boy who does his homework, reads, writes for the schools paper and socialises, even though it sounds bland put like that Paul is a dedicated investigator even when he's told its not worth it and is always up to try something new. Terry is a red headed independent and straight A girl with red hair, she runs the schools paper and is far from dumb, she absorbs everything she observes including activities carried out by Paul. She is an independent and strong willed female and always supportive and good to be around. Caleb/Cale is the gunman who we hear a lot about throughout the first part of the book before we finally take a look into his life. He seems quite dumb and seems to be the loner of the school but he has a certain look on life that isn't all a load of poop. Even though he's portrayed as the bad person in the book you do get to know of his reasoning and such, this is great to see as it isn't just 'oh he's a baddy because he's bad' there is an actual explanation as to why.


Consisting of 103 pages I would call it a short read but it took me one hour less to read this than to read an 151 paged book somehow. No matter anyway, I was surprised to say the least, everything was clear and intriguing to read, never a dull moment. The reason I sat to read this today/tonight/this morning  was only because after I had posted my review on Being Layla Hart, I found a spider right by my face on the wall and couldn't sleep so I spent 3 hours reading to be just as awake as I had been three hours earlier.




I'm not actually go into a brief description of the plot because it was so marvellous, I'm highly recommending you to read it yourself and not just read what I write. As much as I mention American Horror Story at the beginning, that is by far the only criticism I can have for this book. It's a great book and I recommend it to anyone who A. wants a quick read B. loves investigation. If you apply to B I want to know if you figure it out before the end of the book. By it I mean it, you'll know when you read it. I have no regret to give this book a 5 out of 5