I know that Non-Fiction Monday is supposed to focus on non-fiction for kids, but I don’t read much of that and I still wanted to get in on the party.  So here we are.

How to Be a Budget Fashionista is a guide by Kathryn Finney, founder of thebudgetfashionista.com.  The book is divided into three sections, labeled as “Steps."

Step 1: Know Your Budget.  In this section, Kathryn provides advice for fashionistas who maybe have been letting their money get away from them.  This section is essentially a mini-lesson in personal finance, and could benefit even those who do not want to become fashionistas.

Step 2: Know Your Style.  Every fashionista has a distinctive style, but these can be grouped into certain types.  Most people have more than one style.  In this step, you take a quiz and create a look book to determine what your style is.  Then, Kathryn supplies a list of designers and stores that fit your style.  PLEASE NOTE: Designers are not budget-friendly most of the time, so it might be best to look at these designers and use their work for inspiration, rather than plan to actually buy their designs.  (My style is mostly Romantic, with secondary styles of Conservative and Urban Trekker.)

Step 3: Know Your Bargains.  In the third part of the book, Kathryn discusses how to find bargains in department stores, online, from designer outlets, and more.  One review on Amazon pointed out that Kathryn’s idea of a bargain sometimes does not seem like a bargain at all: $50 for a blouse, $90 for a skirt.  While these aren’t bargains I can afford, if you look at the percent markdown from their original prices, the items she cites are true bargains.  Worrying about the specifics, however, isn’t what the book is about anyway.  Even if your clothing budget is such that you have no choice but to buy all of your clothing in thrift stores, there is advice here for you.

In addition to fashion and shopping advice, How to Be a Budget Fashionista includes ideas on how to supplement your income, how to arrange a clothing swap with friends, and how to make several beauty products from things you have lying around the house.

If you are looking to learn how to put an outfit together, this is not the book for you.  (That would be The Lucky Shopping Manual.)  But if you already know how to do that and just need some help doing it cheaper, you should check this book out.

Book: How to Be A Budget Fashionista [affiliate link]
Author: Kathryn Finney
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Original Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Pages: 240
Source of Book: Purchased from Amazon

 Sometimes, I take it into my head to get a really good handle on a topic/genre.  I often ask Little Willow for a custom reading list.  But this time, I’ve generated my own.

I am going to acquaint myself with the genre of Steampunk.  I’m so usually surrounded by people intimately familiar with this, at least as a cultural phenomenon, that I find it absurd when I have to explain it.  But I find it more refreshing than absurd, so in case you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a subgenre of speculative fiction (sci fi/fantasy) that deals with alternative futures based on an imagined past.  Basically, ask yourself what life would be like if the great classic Sci Fi of the Victorian era (Jules Verne, H. G. Wells) had been real.

Sound fun?  The name is a combination of Steam, the primary way of powering technology in such an imaginary world, with the affix -punk, taken from the genre of Cyberpunk.  Steampunk often has an anti-establishment sensibility, but with a more optimistic bent than Cyberpunk and other speculative genres.  This suits my personality perfectly, I think.

Additionally, there is a Steampunk aesthetic, generally Neo-Victorian with lots of gears and buckles, which really appeals to me.

Here’s my reading list:

Proto-Steampunk
Gormenghast Novels (esp Titus Alone), Mervyn Peake
Worlds of the Imperium, Keith Laumer
Queen Victoria’s Bomb, Ronald W. Clark 
A Nomad of the Time Streaks, Michael Moorcock

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my feed so you will get my other book list posts.

 You can find it at their site.

If nothing else, this is an excellent way to find new books to read.

What are the Cybils?  They are the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards.

From the About Page:

Our purpose is two-fold:

• Reward the children’s and young adult authors (and illustrators – let’s not forget them) whose books combine the highest literary merit and “kid appeal.” What’s that mean? If some la-di-dah awards can be compared to brussel sprouts, and other, more populist ones to gummy bears, we’re thinking more like organic chicken nuggets. We’re yummy and nutritious.
• Foster a sense of community among bloggers who write about children’s and YA literature, highlight our best reviewers (and shamelessly promote their blogs) and provide a forum for the similarly obsessed.

 1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
25. 300, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
26. Organizing from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern
27. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three: Sons of Entropy, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder 
28. A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray 
29. R.O.D.: Read or Dream, Volume 1 : Three Sisters–One Power, Hideyuki Kurata
30. Strangers in Paradise Pocket Book 1, Terry Moore
31. Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
32. Goy Crazy, Melissa Schorr
33. The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud 
34. Return to Labyrinth, Volume I, Jake T. Forbes and Chris Lie

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
25. 300, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
26. Organizing from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern
27. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three: Sons of Entropy, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder 
28. A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray 
29. R.O.D.: Read or Dream, Volume 1 : Three Sisters–One Power, Hideyuki Kurata
30. Strangers in Paradise Pocket Book 1, Terry Moore
31. Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
32. Goy Crazy, Melissa Schorr
33. The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud 

1. Do you have a favorite author?
Yes, Piers Anthony.

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?
Goodness no!  He is immensely prolific.

3. Did you LIKE everything?
I think so.  I did stop reading one of his series (Apprentice Adept) because it got too many generations in.  I made it through 3, and that was about enough.  Piers also writes a lot of stuff that makes me distinctly uncomfortable, but I think it’s good for me to read.

4. How about a least favorite author?
Maybe J. D. Salinger?  I really don’t like Catcher in the Rye.  Or William Faulkner.

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?
The Terrys: Terry Brooks and Terry Pratchett.  Terry Brooks bored me, and Terry Pratchett’s humor is too self-aware for my tastes.

This post is part of Colleen’s initiative for people to blog about giving books as gifts, which is a fine thing to do. (I myself have made a pledge to buy handmade, and I haven’t learned bookmaking yet, so I won’t be giving these.)

I am going to talk about some books I have read in the past year, and specific people in my life to whom I would give them. You’ll notice that these aren’t in tidy categories; sorry. I’ll try to give you a picture of what each person is like, so you can understand my book selections. I’ll talk about one person’s selections per day.

The first recipient of my imaginary book gifts is my friend Alana. Alana is a big fan of things morbid, creepy, goth, and sort of old-worldy. I would purchase A Drowned Maiden’s Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz for her, because its combination of historicity with eeriness would suit her taste well, I think. Just the fact that “A Melodrama” is part of the full title suggests to me that this is a book for Alana. I think Maud’s orphan-to-con artist transformation would amuse her greatly. Alana is in school to become a teacher, and it is for this reason that I would give her Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes. Through the alternating poetry and prose, Nikki Grimes shows how one teacher’s recognizing a “teachable moment” can snowball into a community building effort. This is the kind of inspirational book that future teachers need to read.

Return here for future links to the other posts in this series. Visit Colleen’s post collecting recommendations from around the kidlitosphere.

Welcome to my new home on the web.  Please take a look around!

From Booking Through Thursday:

So–just for today–how about sharing 7 things that you’re thankful for?

I have so many things to be thankful for! Here goes:

1. My family, and
2. How they always believe in me
3. My fiance, and
4. How he always knows just what I need to make me feel better when I’m down
5. Cats
6. Creativity
7. The Internet, where you can make friends, find a job, and be a published author just by hitting a button in some blogging software

So this year my sister said to me, “I’m not even gonna pretend I’m gonna do NaNoWriMo.”

Well, I started my NaNo on Nov 2, and I have yet to break 10,000 words - but the 8500 or so I’ve written is more fiction than I normally write in ANY month.

And that is why, even though I’ve never made it to 50,000 words and don’t know if I ever will, I try every year. Because the 2000, 8000, 10000 or 20000 words I actually get through are more than I do any other time of year. And I feel like each time I do it, even though my word count has actually gotten lower in recent years, I get closer to something, some intangible place wherein I am a writer.