Brad Pitt on a horse, win a book, have genuine input into the title of another book, and some Mortal Instruments.

What's in a title?
In the case of the title of this post, the answer's easy.
Too much.
But title's can fail in all sorts of ways. Don't judge a book by it's cover. Absolutely. That's right. But its title? Judging a book by it's title is one of the things you're supposed to do.
The Mortal Instruments series are my current favourite YA books, amazing characters, plotting, imagination.
Rubbish titles. 'City of Ashes,' 'City of Glass.'
Yawn.
'City of Fallen Angels' is the best, but it's not actually true, so that's hardly fair.
'The Iron King.' Similar.
There's definitely something about books in a series having vanilla titles. I guess it's difficult to be both striking, and fit into a theme, but I'm going to give it a shot. After 'Song to Wake to' and 'Rock Anthem' the third levels book will have a title that's got something to do with lullabies. I've got two options.

'Lullaby of Lies'
or
'Lullaby for a Sleeping Lion.'

Please tell me what you think. I'd be really grateful for any input. Use the comments section to tell us which title you prefer, and if you like, tell us your favourite book title. I'm going to start off with 'Legends of the Fall.' Not the film, the book by Jim Harrison, which is brilliant. The film is overblown and histrionic, but if you advance the clip at the top of the page to minute 3:00 you'll find its winning scene. This is how all men should ideally arrive, preceded by a vanguard of galloping horses. It's an Eddy Moon moment.
I look forward to getting your input. One of the comments will win a FREE copy of Rock Anthem...

The Best Book I read in 2011

This recommendation is a tiny bit complicated, as its kind of not just for one book, but for three. The book I'm recommending is the last of a trilogy, and you really should read the first two. Interestingly I almost didn't get to the 2nd one. I think I downloaded it mainly cos I needed something to read, and I was going to be out of wifi range in a moment... Needless to say, I read it, liked it, got drawn along to the 3rd one...

I'm currently in the very early days of writing a long series of books, and so I have especial admiration for what the author of this one has done, really achieving a spectacular climax and answering a ton of questions.
What's the book?

City of Glass (Incidentally, full props to the guys who made this trailer, so imaginitive... )

I'm trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but apologies in advance if I give anything away, or tell you something I didn't think was obvious.

So in CoG the Mortal Instruments saga moves to Alicante - long time home of the Shadowhunters. And that makes a nice change. It's fantasy, without being too fantastic. I only have two quibbles, the first is with Venice-like canals, somehow halfway up a hill, the second is that though the setting is a massive confrontation between all the most important supernatural beings in the world, how come 99% of them are from New York? Including practically all the werewolves and vampires?

But that's picky. The Jace/Clary issues are resolved beautifully and Cassandra Clare plays her trump card - the revelation of the angels - with massive style. There's even a little hook left for us into another sequel - a good thing, considering hoe badly everybody wanted City of Fallen Anegls.
So there you have it, heroism, romance, drama, violence. Recommended to everyone.

Kim Kardashian, Apes and Whales, and Cassandra Claire's Mortal Instruments

             Fake tan, hair spray, perfume, make up. This is how glamour is achieved in real life, but in stories, it's better. In stories glamour equals magic. The celebrities on the red carpet use their version of glamour to minimise the ordinary, maximise the extraordinary. They make run of the mill features beautiful, and turn beautiful faces otherworldly. It's a kind of real life magic. In contrast, in The Mortal Instruments, by Cassandra Claire, magical beings use glamour to make themselves seem ordinary, to make themselves seem exactly like the rest of us. Art imitating life, but in an opposite kind of a way.
             A while ago I wrote a post about the appeal - in children's literature - of portals (rabbit holes, wardrobes and suchlike) leading to magical worlds.  Now we come across a second kind of magical world, the kind that exists all around us and we just can't see it. I've just read Claire's 'City of Bones' and 'City of Ashes.'  In these a 17 year old girl learns that the world is full of witches, werewolves, vampires and elves, walking alongside us in magical disguise.
             The theme of this blog, recently anyway, has been looking at ideas in books and trying to understand why they work. The idea of glamour is fascinating, but I think a more important part of the story is the idea of different, intelligent species walking among us. What's the draw? I think it comes from the same desire for the real world to be BETTER, more interesting, more romantic that also drives the appeal of glamour.
             I liked the stories, though not so much as it's raving fans, because to me there's tons of magic to be learnt about the intelligence of creatures we really do share planet earth with. 

            And we shouldn't forget that we know far more about the minds of our furry relatives than we do about whales and dolphins. The biggest brain ever to have existed belongs to the sperm whale, and we know practically nothing about what it uses all that grey matter for, what philosophies fizz through it. I've written an entire novel of guessing...
            The other pull of these stories is the plotting, but by the end of the 2nd it had begun to drag. There's lots of it that I seemed to half recognise from Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings and who knows where else. And the characters don't seem to move forwards as much as round in circles. It's very much a series, too, with not much ending to mark the movement from one book to the next. It seems fairly arbitrary.
            But if you're prepared to read all three, and you like the idea of hidden magic all around you, I recommend it. I also recommend finding out what whales and gorillas think, but that's likely to be a bit more tricky...
            If you're interested in the kind of magic distracting me in 2019, find out here... https://sxswx365.blogspot.com/