On My Wishlist (#4)

On My Wishlist is hosted over at Book Chick City
Here's a small sampling of books I'm desperately wishing to read:

Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun (Carla Sonheim) (July 1, 2010)

Goodreads Summary: Carla Sonheim is an artist and creativity workshop instructor known for her fun and innovative projects and techniques designed to help adult students recover a more spontaneous, playful approach to creating. Her innovative ideas are now collected and elaborated on in this unique volume. Carla offers a year's worth of assignments, projects, ideas, and techniques that will introduce more creativity and nonsense into your art and life. Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists offers readers a fun way to learn and gain expertise in drawing through experimentation and play. There is no right or wrong result, yet, the readers gain new skills and confidence, allowing them to take their work to a new level.

Why I Want It: I've actually met Carla at an art retreat I've gone to a couple years called Art and Soul. This book appeals to me on soo many levels and if it can help my lack of drawing skillz I'm all for it.

The Crystal Cave (Arthurian Saga #1) (Mary Stewart) (May 1, 2003)

Amazon Summary:  The first in a series of four books, this novel focuses on the early life of Merlin the magician, and the political developments of fifth-century Britain.

Merlin's childhood is formed by the absence of his reticent, convent-bound mother and his unnamed and unknown father. As the bastard grandson of a local king, Merlin is the object of both envy and ridicule. His strange powers and predictions earn him greater status as a pariah, and he leaves home as a preadolescent. Returning years later as a young man--empowered by self-knowledge and magic--Merlin finds himself caught in the currents of the shifting kingdoms.
Why I Want It: One of my most favorite stories EVER is that of King Arthur and Merlin. This sounds like a very different take on the classic legend and I'm excited to check it out.

Divergent (Veronica Roth) (May 3, 2011)

Goodreads Summary: In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.
Why I Want It:  I reallyreallyreally want to read this book. I LOVE dystopian and the premise of this book sounds AWESOME.

Hunger and Rage (The Horseman of the Apocalypse: The Rider's Quartet #1 and #2) (Jackie Kessler)

Goodreads Summary for Hunger: “Thou art the Black Rider. Go thee out unto the world.”

Lisabeth Lewis has a black steed, a set of scales, and a new job: she’s been appointed Famine. How will an anorexic seventeen-year-old girl from the suburbs fare as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Traveling the world on her steed gives Lisa freedom from her troubles at home: her constant battle with hunger, and her struggle to hide it from the people who care about her. But being Famine forces her to go places where hunger is a painful part of everyday life, and to face the horrifying effects of her phenomenal power. Can Lisa find a way to harness that power — and the courage to battle her own inner demons?

Goodreads Summary for Rage:

Missy didn’t mean to cut so deep. But after the party where she was humiliated in front of practically everyone in school, who could blame her for wanting some comfort? Sure, most people don’t find comfort in the touch of a razor blade, but Missy always was . . . different.
That’s why she was chosen to become one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War. Now Missy wields a new kind of blade—a big, brutal sword that can cut down anyone and anything in her path. But it’s with this weapon in her hand that Missy learns something that could help her triumph over her own pain: control.
A unique approach to the topic of self-mutilation,Rage is the story of a young woman who discovers her own power and refuses to be defeated by the world.
Why I Want Them: These books sound highly fascinating with the connection of one of the four horsemen to a social issue such as anorexia and self-mutilation.  I'm definately drawn to the summaries, especially book 2.

What's on YOUR wishlist?