All the Things She Read

Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

2012-02-15T21:21:00.001-05:00

Title: Living Dead Girl
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 170
Where I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads Summary: "Once upon a time, I was a little girl who disappeared.
Once upon a time, my name was not Alice.
Once upon a time, I didn't know how lucky I was."

When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends -- her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.

Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.

This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.

My Thoughts: Wow. This has to be the most disturbing book I've ever read. There is no way that you can read Living Dead Girl and not be affected.

I thought it was really effective how Scott opened up the book by having the first few paragraphs narrated by a neighbor. He's completely oblivious to the horrendous situation that Alice is in and actually comments on how ungrateful he thinks she is-like most daughters are, apparently-because she doesn't thank Ray when he opens the door for her. The reader becomes instantly aware at how skilled Ray is at creating this charming persona. Everyone falls for him and thinks he's so sweet and such a wonderful father. Alice is all alone in knowing what a monster he really is.

Ray has got to be the most hateful character I've come across in literature. He actually thinks that he loves Alice and that she should love him in return for all of the things he does for her. It's beyond disturbing. Scott doesn't gloss over the details but goes into all of the things that Alice is forced to do. She suffers every single abuse that a person can go through--sexual, physical, verbal, emotional. He starves her in order to keep her at 100 pounds, so that she still feels like a ten-year-old girl. So sick.

I'm not sure what to think about the ending. It didn't feel conclusive, and I would describe it as open-ended. There are two possibilities that the reader is left with for how Alice's horror story ends, and one is more pessimistic than the other. I don't know what it says about me, but I was leaning more towards the less happy ending. Just from the way it all played out, I thought that ending made more sense. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I unfortunately have to leave my thoughts vague. I would love to talk about the ending with someone whose read the book.

Living Dead Girl is not for the lighthearted. This book packs an emotional punch, and the story will stay with you forever, so be prepared for that if you choose to pick it up.

Wicked Winter Read-a-Thon Updates and Challenges

2012-02-04T12:01:00.003-05:00

Day 1:
Pages Read: 186
Books Finished: 1 (The Iron King)
Books Started: 0
Challenges Completed: 0

Well, I finished The Iron King, so I'm very happy about that! It was a great book with so much going on and non-stop action. After finishing it, though, I got caught up in other things and never started Light In August so I'm a little behind, but that's okay. Hopefully, I can catch up today. I was also hoping to take part in the third challenge and show off my reading space, but when I went to connect my phone to my computer, I experienced some problems. The phone is practically brand new too, and one of the main reasons I bought it was so that I could transfer pictures to my computer! I hope I can get that all worked out soon, though probably not this weekend.

Day 2:
Pages Read: 125
Books Finished: 0
Books Started: 3 (Light in August, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Memory in Death)
Challenges Completed: 3

Well, I read the number of pages I wanted to for LiA and IitLoaSG for Saturday, but I never picked up Dark Passages. As it turned out, I came across Memory in Death (one of my favorites in the J.D. Robb series) on a free book shelf on my campus while I was reading Light in August, and I opted to reread a bit of that book in the evening instead. I don't know why, but I've been craving romances for the past few weeks, and I just couldn't resist Roarke and Eve. I seriously doubt I'll finish Dark Passages before the weekend ends now, and it doesn't look like I'll start Guernsey at all, but I should at least finish my reading assignments for class.

Oh! But this morning I found out I won the giveaway for Challenge #6 (hosted by Michelle @ Book Briefs)! Yay! I chose The Near Witch by Victoria Swab. I can't wait to receive it!

Challenge #4: The Wicked Winter Ball (Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer)

Using book covers, show us what you will wear and who you bring!

My dress:

The black ruffled dress from the cover of Torment. Gorgeous!!

And my date:

Ash from The Iron Fey series! I am so in love with him right now!

Challenge #6: Picture Puzzle (Michelle @ Book Briefs)

Rules: First pick your book. The pick pictures that represent words in the book's title. Put the pictures/clues together so people can guess what the book title is. Get creative and make it as challenging as you want.

My book picture puzzle:

**Hint: This is an adult fiction Japanese novel

Day 3:
Pages Read: 185
Books Finished: --
Books Started: --
Books Read: Memory in Death and Light in August
Challenges Completed: --

Looking at the stats for Sunday, you would think I wasn't even participating in the readathon that day. I got distracted with Memory in Death (which I wasn't even planning on reading for the readathon), and of the 185 pages I read that day, 168 pages were from the J.D. Robb book. I never even picked up Dark Passages, Poisonwood Bible or Guernsey at all over the weekend, but oh well. I still had fun. And I hope to join in on the Wicked Wildfire Read-a-Thon in June.

Wicked Winter Read-a-Thon

2012-02-03T15:07:00.000-05:00

The Wicked Winter Read-a-Thon is hosted by Rebecca @ Kindle Fire and April @ My Shelf Confessions.

This read-a-thon starts today (Feb. 3rd) and lasts until Sunday, Feb. 5th. I decided to join at the last minute because I plan to read a lot this weekend. I have three novels I want to finish, plus three books for school I need to read a good chunk of by Monday.

If you're interested in joining, you can sign-up as late as midnight on February 4th (the first link on this post will take you to the sign-up page). There are also challenges going on during the read-a-thon with different prizes offered for each. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun!

For the read-a-thon, I would like to read:

I started The Iron King on Thursday evening, and I am currently on page 228. I hope to finish it tonight.

I've been reading Dark Passages for . . . oh, over a month now I guess. I'm really enjoying it, but I keep getting distracted and putting it aside for other paranormal books that are heavier on the romance than this one is. I only have 100 pages left to read of it now, so hopefully I can knock out the rest of the book tomorrow.

I doubt I'll able to finish this book before the weekend's over, but I will try to make it through as much as I can on Saturday and Sunday.

******************************************

Now, for the books I need to read for school:

I am about 80 pages into this book and I am LOVING it! I need to read 60 more pages by Wednesday, but since I want to focus on a critical analysis paper for another class during the week, I want to read as much of the 60 pages as I can squeeze in over the weekend, leaving my weekdays as free as possible to focus on the essay.

I'm taking a Faulkner seminar this semester, and again, I am LOVING it, but it's a tough class with lots of reading. I need to read about 120 pages of Light in August by Tuesday, but the assignment for Thursday is to read 130 more pages, which will be really difficult to do in just two days. So, I want to get through as much of Light in August as I can to hopefully lighten up my reading load for Tuesday and Wednesday. This will actually be a reread because I read it a couple of years ago (for pleasure), but two years may as well by two hundred for how much I actually remember about this book. It's not that I didn't like it (it's actually my favorite Faulkner novel), but after a few years, memories start to fade. . .

I only need to read 55 pages from this book by Monday, but when I glanced through the book a couple of days ago, I saw that the writing looked really dense, the type was tiny and the paragraphs would often be a page long. All of this spells out a tough read that will definitely take longer to get through than you'd first assume just going off of the number of pages assigned.

So, those are all of the books I hope to read through over the next three days. Good luck to me. :)

Review: Pink by Lili Wilkinson

2012-02-02T17:19:00.000-05:00

Title: Pink
Author: Lili Wilkinson
Pages: 304
Publisher: Harper Collins
Where I Got This Book: Goodreads' Giveaways
Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads Summary: Ava has a secret. She is tired of her ultracool attitude, ultra-radical politics, and ultrablack clothing. She's ready to try something new--she's even ready to "be" someone new. Someone who fits in, someone with a gorgeous boyfriend, someone who wears pink.

Transferring to Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence is the perfect chance to try on a new identity. But just in case things don't work out, Ava is hiding her new interests from her parents, and "especially" from her old girlfriend.

Secrets have a way of being hard to keep, though, and Ava finds that changing herself is more complicated than changing her wardrobe. Even getting involved in the school musical raises issues she never imagined. As she faces surprising choices and unforeseen consequences, Ava wonders if she will "ever" figure out who she really wants to be.

Humor, heart, and the joys of drama--on- and offstage--combine in Ava's delight-fully colorful journey of self-discovery.

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this one. The beginning reminded me a bit of the Shopaholics series-it had the same humor. Ava would often find herself in embarrassing situations, and since I am so sensitive to a character's humiliation, I found myself cringing a lot in empathy.

I thought the characters were great, especially Sam and Jules, who were so funny and sweet. I wish I'd had friends like that in high school, who throw around different bits of trivia and go out on those awesome missions (seriously, how fun would it be to sail a couch down a river?) and go to one of those 24-hour sci-fi movie marathons. It's geeky, but it sounds so fun.

The ending was nice. Everything wasn't wrapped up in a nice pink bow (haha) but it was satisfying and realistic. Ava is still trying to understand who she is at the end, but she has a better handle on her life and where she wants to be.

**I received an ARC copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

Why I Love Wednesdays: Book Challenges (!!)

2012-02-01T19:40:00.000-05:00

Why I Love Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic. Every Wednesday, she discusses a different literary topic. The topic this week is your favorite book challenge for 2012.

Why I Love . . . The Dusty Bookshelf Challenge

I was originally going to write about the seasonal challenges I participate in for one of my Goodreads' groups. We do that challenge twice a year, and there are 34 different tasks to complete, each worth a certain number of points. The tasks always add to my reading experience because they are so diverse and sometimes require you to really dig around and look into books/authors you have never heard of before in order to find a book that works for that task. Check out my Fall/Winter challenge task list on my Challenges page to get an idea of what the tasks are all about.

For this post, though, I want to focus on a challenge that I just discovered today at Alysia's blog. It is The Dusty Bookshelf Challenge hosted by Jessica @ Books: A True Story. The challenge is to read books that you've owned for a while or books that you've been wanting to read for a LONG time.

I'm using this post as my announcement post for the challenge as well. I own 125(!) books, but instead of listing them all, I'm just going to list the ones that have been on my shelves for a year or longer (at some point I might add a TBR page to my blog that lists all the books I own and still need to read):

Adult Fiction
-One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-The Stand by Stephen King
-The Shining by Stephen King
-Widow for One Year by John Irving
-The Cider House Rules by John Irving
-A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
-Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
-Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
-The Risk Pool by Richard Russo
-Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
-Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
-The Island by Victoria Hislop
-Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
-The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
-Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
-The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George
-Helen of Troy by Margaret George
-Atonement by Ian McEwan
-A Carnivore's Inquiry by Sabina Murray
-The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
-Poison by Kathryn Harrison
-Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
-The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
-The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
-The Red Tent by Anita Diamont
-Playing Botticelli by Liza Nelson
-The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
-We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
-Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
-Set in Motion by Valerie Martin
-The Girls by Lori Lansens
-31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan
-Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
-The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
-The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet
-The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
-Perfume by Patrick Suskind
-Cassie Draws the Universe by P.S. Baber
-No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook . . . (this one has a long title) by Edgardo Vega Yunque

Classics
-1984 by George Orwell
-The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
-Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
-The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
-Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
-Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
-The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
-Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
-Watership Down by Richard Adams
-Metamorphosis by Ovid
-Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
-The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Young Adult
-Eragon by Christopher Paolini
-Firelight by Sophie Jordan
-Wither by Lauren DeStefano
-Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
-Ruined by Paula Morris

Non-Fiction
-Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
-Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
-An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks
-The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
-The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
-Personal History by Katharine Graham
-Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
-When the Air Hits Your Brain by Frank T. Vertosick
-360 Degrees Longitude by John Higham

Whew! I know that from the look of this list I should aim for the highest level in this challenge, but since this list isn't including all of the newer books I bought that I really want to get to, I'm going to aim for Cobwebs (10-15 books).

Why I Love Wednesdays: Types of Endings

2012-01-25T17:52:00.000-05:00

Why I Love Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic. Every Wednesday, she discusses a different literary topic. The topic this week is your favorite type of ending.

Why I Love . . . Epilogues

It's been so long since I've participated in Why I Wednesdays. My last WILW post was in October! But I'm happy to be taking part in this again. This is a great meme that can lead to interesting discussions on so many bookish topics.

Anyways, in this post I want to talk about my love for epilogues. I love it when I get to see what the characters are like and what they're up to years later. Not enough authors do this. I mainly see epilogues in the romance novels I like to read (Susan Elizabeth Phillips often includes a short epilogue in her books). I was so happy to find an epilogue at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. That was the first time I can remember seeing an epilogue in a young adult novel, and I don't think I've come across another since then, which is a shame. Epilogues really should be utilized in fiction more often. It was great seeing Harry, Ron and Hermione all grown up with kids of their own! It seems that quite a few fans disliked that last chapter though, saying that it read too much like fanfiction, so obviously not everyone cares about reading about favorite characters in future years, and I'm sure there are many who would prefer to use their own imagination and come up with their own ideas about how those characters' lives turned out.

My opinion: It's all fiction anyway, so if you don't like what the author wrote in his or her epilogue, you can easily disregard it and come up with your own ending, which would be just as legitimate. I think it'd just be interesting to read how the author imagines these characters' lives panning out and see that they really did have a happily ever after.

Top Ten Bookish Resolutions

2012-01-24T00:19:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

This week's TTT is a freebie, so I decided to do the Bookish Resolutions topic from last year. I figured it was still early enough in the year to make some goals :)

1. Read 65 books this year: I read 90(!) books last year, but that was including books I'd read for classes, including a month of summer classes. I graduate in May (Yay!) so that means that I'll have about five months less of assigned reading that I can count. I think sixty-five will still be a pretty challenging goal since I used to only read about 40-50 books a year before I started college.

2. Write more reviews: I'm such a slacker when it comes to reviews. I've only written one review in the past couple months. Not good. I resolve to write a review within the week of finishing a book that I would like to share on my blog. I also resolve to write reviews for the 10 or so books that I read in the past couple of months by the end of February.

3. Posts: I have two goals in regard to my posts on this blog. 1) Post more! I haven't been as committed to posting as I hoped I'd be when I started this blog, and I really want to change that. My last semester is going to be super busy so I might not be able to make much progress with this goal right away, but after April I will have no more excuses. 2) Branch out more. I tend to stick with either memes or reviews, but I would like to write some discussion posts, make vlogs, share bookish sites and other things, and maybe even put up a random personal post every once and a while (assuming that anything interesting enough actually happens to me to write about).

4. Create labels for my posts: I put off doing this in the beginning, thinking it wasn't necessary then since my blog was small enough to navigate without those handy labels. But now as more posts are going up, my blog is becoming less searchable and I want to change that.

5. Visit and comment on more blogs: I love checking out other blogs and interacting with bloggers, which I haven't been doing enough of lately.

6. Read more classics: I've been reading mostly young adult books ever since my sophomore year of college. They're such fast reads that it's easier to find time for pleasure reading than it would be if I tried reading anything heavier, but now that I'm graduating I'm excited to get back to reading more literary fiction and classics (of my choice--aka not assigned reading) that I really loved in high school. This doesn't mean I'm done with young adult by any means, but I don't want it to be my major genre this year like it was for the last two.

7. Read more thrillers/mysteries: When I checked out NPR's Top 100 Killer Thrillers list, I was disappointed to see that I had only read five books off the list. However, about half of that list is on my to-be-read shelf. I've been making very little *cough* zero *cough* progress with this list since I came across it over a year ago, and it is well past time that I started reading more of this genre.

8. Start reading outside: I've tried reading outside a couple times, but I never really enjoyed it as much as I thought I would, and I think that's because I'm not really used to it. As soon as the weather gets warmer, I'm going to really give it a shot. If I can learn to love outdoor reading, that would open up a million more possible reading spots for me, and I love my variety.

9. Get an eReader: I really want a Nook Simple Touch for my birthday, which is coming up in April. I keep seeing some really amazing ebooks for only 99 cents and there are a lot of FREE ebooks (such as most classics which I'm excited for, but there are also some interesting paranormal and romance ebooks for free). I'm certain that I'm going to be on a very strict budget for most, if not all, of this year-who knows if I'll ever get a job in this economy?-so the eReader will be great to have for that time. Not to mention how handy it'll be on my two week trip to Europe in June. Instead of having to lug around a dozen books, I can just carry around my ultra-light eReader with dozens of books at my disposal. Heck yes!!

10. Read more books that I own: I resolve to read only books that I own during the summer (with the exception being those cheap ebooks, of course), and if my will power is strong enough, continue reading only books that I own as late into the year as I can manage. I own 126 books that I have yet to read, so my personal library is definitely big enough to see me through to the end of 2012 and well into 2013 (though I know I won't go that long without buying more books or visiting the library).

Teaser Tuesday (1)

2012-01-24T00:00:00.001-05:00

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB @ Should Be Reading.

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share 2 teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
Try to avoid spoilers!

Switched by Amanda Hocking

"We normally do same-sex exchanges, a girl for a girl, a boy for a boy, but Elora had her mind set on the Everlys."

"I thought she had been terrible and cruel like so many of my classmates, but she had known that I wasn't her child."

~p. 167

2012 Chunkster Reading Challenge

2012-01-23T00:27:00.000-05:00

This challenge has its own blog, Chunkster Reading Challenge. The challenge runs from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012 and you can sign-up anytime during the year.

I've been back and forth over whether or not I want to commit to this challenge, but I decided to just throw my hat into the ring. I have many chunksters sitting on my shelves, so hopefully by joining this challenge I will become motivated to finally get to a few of them.

I will be a Chubby Chunkster and aim to read four chunkster books this year. I don't know which four books I want to read for this challenge yet, so I'll just list all the ones I own that I am considering. The only one I am sure about is Helen of Troy because it is part of another challenge I am doing.

-Helen of Troy by Margaret George (611 pg)
-The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1276 pg)
-The Cider House Rules by John Irving (598 pg)
-The Stand by Stephen King (1152 pg)
-A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (496 pg)
-The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (465 pg)
-Personal History by Katharine Graham (642 pg)
-The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (672 pg)
-Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov (624 pg)

Review: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

2012-01-22T19:45:00.001-05:00

Title: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Author: L. Frank Baum
Pages: 153
Publisher: Penguin Books
How I Got This Book: Library
Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads Summary: One of the true classics of American Literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has stirred the imagination of the young and old alike for four generations. Originally published in 1900, it was the first truly American fairy tale, as Baum crafted a wonderful out of such familiar items as a cornfield scarecrow, a mechanical woodman, and a humbug wizard who used old-fashioned hokum to express that universal theme, "There's no place like home."

Follow the adventures of young Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, as their Kansas house is swept away by a cyclone and they find themselves in a strange land called Oz. Here she meets the Munchkins and joins the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion on an unforgettable journey to the Emerald City, where lives the all-powered Wizard of Oz.

My Thoughts: First off, I want to say that I really enjoyed this book and getting to know the characters in a different way, particularly Dorothy. It was interesting reading about her character as a little girl when I'm so used to thinking of her as the teenager from the movie. And I loved all of the new creatures and residents that showed up in the book that were not included in the movie, such as those gigantic beasts (forgot what they're called) and the little China people (and by China I mean the porcelain china, not the country, just so you know). The chapter with the China people was my favorite part of the book, and I wish they could have been in the movie.

With that said, I have to admit that I liked the movie better, mainly because of the Wicked Witch of the West. I was disappointed to find out that the witch did not play a very big role in the book. I was hoping to learn more of her story like I did with the other characters, but she remained a rather minor, enigmatic character.

I also like the wizard a lot more in the movie. I actually kind of disliked him in the book. I can't exactly pinpoint why, but I thought the wizard in the book came across as selfish and very cowardly with little redeeming qualities. In the movie, I was able to see the sincerity in the wizard's eyes when he apologized for tricking everyone and I saw that he looked like a very nice old man, but in the book I didn't quite believe his apologies. When he tricked the scarecrow, lion and tin man into thinking he was actually giving them what they wanted, it didn't feel to me like he really wanted to help them but like he was just unshamelessly fooling them again, resorting back to his old ways that he had just apologized for. There was also the absence of the speeches that he had given to each character in the movie, assuring the lion, tin man and scarecrow that they each had what they desired all along. He let the scarecrow go on thinking he had given him brains when he actuallly just stuffed his head with bran. I really didn't like that.

But those are the only two problems I had with the book. Otherwise, I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'm glad I finally got around to reading this classic.

My Life According to the Books I've Read in 2011

2012-01-09T19:53:00.001-05:00

I found this meme at Midnight Book Girl

Using only book titles you've read in 2011, answer the prompts below:

Describe yourself:
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

How do you feel?:
Passion by Lauren Kate

Describe where you currently live:
666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?:
Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Your favorite form of transportation:
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Your best friend is:
Beastly by Alex Finn

You and your friends are:
Outside Wonderland by Lorna Jane Cook

What's the weather like?:
Frostbite by Richelle Mead

What is life to you?:
Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz

Favorite time of day:
Just After Sunset by Stephen King

Your fear:
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

What is the best advice you have to give?:
Die for Me by Amy Plum

Thought for the day:
French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

How I would like to die:
Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

My soul's present condition:
Torment by Lauren Kate

Review: In the Forests of the Night

2011-12-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

Title: In the Forests of the Night (Den of Shadows #1)
Author: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Pages: 147
Where I Got This Book: Library
Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads Summary: By day, Risika sleeps in a shaded room in Concord, Massachuseets. By night, she hunts the streets of New York City. She is used to being alone. But someone is following Risika. He has left her a black rose, the same sort of rose that sealed her fate three hundred years ago. Three hundred years ago Risika had a family-a brother and a father who loved her. Three hundred years ago she was human.

Now she was a vampire, a powerful one. And her past has come back to torment her.

My Thoughts: I was extremely impressed to learn that the author wrote this book when she was only thirteen. It is very well-written and not just for her age. Despite the novel's short length and the fact that the story only spans a few days, the main character, Risika, was nicely fleshed out. We got to know her story about how she was changed into a vampire when the book would flash back to 1701-the last year Risika was human-and then we get her revenge story in the present time.

What I thought was great about this book was that Risika came across as a very sympathetic and likeable character despite the fact that she was a true vampire. No animal blood for her. She hunted humans at night in NYC. She still had a conscience, though, possibly from her religious upbringing when she was human, and she seems to hunt people that she deems evil (such as murderers, criminals, ect). At least, she did in the beginning. I'm not positive how discriminatory she was about her food after 300 years.

Given how short this novel is, I can't really say much more about it without giving away the whole thing. I will say that I will definitely be reading more books by Atwater-Rhodes. I think she's a very gifted writer. There are four more books in this series (though I think they're more like companion novels and not a continuation of Risika's story), one other series called Kiesha' ra plus a standalone book. Luckily, my campus library carries many of her books. I'll probably have a little Atwater-Rhodes read-a-thon sometime next year.

I have to say, I'm jealous of her. She's only six years older than me and she already has a bookshelf full of her own published novels.

Top Ten Childhood Favorites

2011-12-05T23:57:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

1. The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food
I learned how to read from this series, and this is one of my favorite stories of the Berenstain bears. I remember looking at all of those illustrations of candy and wishing that I had a pile of junk food to snack on too (which was the opposite of what the book intended for me, but oh well). I loved this series to death and I loved the show!

2. I Was So Mad
The Little Critters collection is another series that I learned to read from. I had a really hard time picking which book I wanted to display. I finally decided on I Was So Mad because I remember it being hilarious and I loved those frogs! I really want to go back and read this entire series. I hope my mom still has them somewhere in the house.

3. The Christmas Ghost (Sweet Valley Twins Super Chiller #1)
I don't think there's a single Sweet Valley book I haven't read (from every series).This is one of my particular favorites of the Twins series, and it's a Christmas themed book, so it's a perfect pick for December. In this book, Elizabeth gets a famous teen movie star to come to Sweet Valley and help out with a charity fund raiser for a local hospital, but Jessica, who is desperate to meet him, pretends to be her twin. She thinks there's no harm in what she does, but three ghosts from Christmas past, present and future show her the error of her ways. I'm definitely going to have to check out my local libraries once I get home after finals and see if any of them carry this book. It would make a great holiday read, and I haven't read a Sweet Valley book in some time so it'll be really nice to revisit the twins again.

4. Weeping Willow
One of my favorite books of all time. I felt such a kinship with the main character, Tiny Lambert (my own last name is Lambert, so that might have played a part in that). I even thought about naming my first daughter Tiny after I'd read this book, but thankfully I let that one go (since my daughter would probably actually be tiny-I'm only 5' 1" myself-so that would just be cruel).

5. Where the Lilies Bloom
This is another beautiful book, and a sad one. This should be assigned reading for all young girls (I would say 4th grade or older). I loved that this book took place in the North Carolina (I was living in California at the time but was born in NC and always considered myself a southern girl at heart). This book was a wonderful taste of home.

**********************************************

Hmmmm . . . well, that's all I can think of for books I loved in elementary school. Like I said above, I was obsessed with Sweet Valley and those books took up most of my reading time. However, there are a couple more books I would like to share that I fell in love with in the seventh grade:

6. Ella Enchanted
This book became an instant favorite. It has it all: romance, fantasy, adventure. I literally could not put it down until I finished it. I read Ella Enchanted in one day, which was something I was quite proud of because it was the first time I could remember doing that (not counting the kid chapter books).

7. The Girl Who Owned a City
This was my first dystopian novel ever and it blew me away! If you have never read it, you need to get to it immediately. Here's a short summary of the book (taken from Goodreads): When a plague sweeps over the earth killing everyone except children under twelve, ten-year-old Lisa organizes a group to rebuild a new way of life. Sounds epic, right?

My New Header!!

2011-11-20T17:11:00.000-05:00

I finally have a lovely header for my blog! I'm so excited about it! It was created by the wonderful Katie of KD Designs. I think it's beautiful and I'm so happy with it.

So, what do you all think of it?

Let me know in the comments! :)

Re-Readathon Update

2011-11-19T21:30:00.001-05:00

Jamie at The Perpetual Page-Turner has been hosting a
re-readathon this weekend, from November 18-20th.

When I first signed up for the re-readathon, I was hoping I could reread Armstrong's entire Darkest Powers trilogy and get through a book a day, but of course school got in the way. I had to cut down my goal to just the first book of the trilogy, The Summoning.

I wasn't able to start The Summoning until 5 o'clock on Friday because I had work, but I was still able to read over half the book that day. I now have a little less than a hundred pages left to read and I should be able to finish it tonight. That will leave my whole Sunday free for school work . Oh joy!!

I'm enjoying rereading the novel. I remember quite a bit of it from when I first read it over a year ago. There haven't been any surprising scenes or characters that I've forgotten about, but that's fine by me. I just love being able to revisit this cast of characters. I'm especially enjoying Chloe and Derek's interactions and their bantering, knowing what I know about where their relationship will end up.

The biggest different is that it's missing the scary factor from all of the ghosts that Chloe happens upon. This book was never actually scary, but there are no surprises anymore. That's keeping me from enjoying it quite as much as I did the first time, but it's still a five star read.

2012 Challenges

2011-11-16T20:22:00.004-05:00

So far, I found two challenges for next year that I'm excited about participating in.

The first one is The 2012 TBR Challenge hosted by Roof Beam Reader. This challenge is pretty much exactly the same as the yearly challenge I take part in for one of my groups on Goodreads. I pick 12 books and 2 alternates (totaling 14 books) that have been on my to-be-read shelf for at least a year (so the books cannot have been published after 2010) and I have from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012 to read them. The only difference with Roof Beam's challenge is that I am required to review the books on the list in order for them to count (and I can win a prize for completing the challenge!).

Here's my list:

1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
2. Helen of Troy by Margaret George
3. The Shining by Stephen King
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer
6. Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott (finished 1-08-2012)
7. The Host by Stephanie Meyer
8. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
9. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
10. Looking for Alaska by John Green
11. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
12. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Alternates
13. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
14. Firelight by Sophie Jordan

The second challenge that I'll be participating in is the Back to the Classics Challenge 2012 hosted by Sarah Reads Too Much. The goal is to read nine classics during the year from different categories:

Any 19th Century Classic: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (alright, so I'm cheating a little here. Sue me. Besides, the rules of the challenge actually says overlaps are allowed, so there : )

Any 20th Century Classic: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Reread a classic of your choice: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

A Classic Play: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Classic Romance: Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

Read a classic that has been translated from its original language into your language: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (yes, another overlap)

Classic Award Winner: The Reivers by William Faulkner

Read a classic set in a country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

Top Ten Books That Have Been Gathering Dust On My Shelves

2011-11-15T00:00:00.002-05:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

Ada or Ardor

I know that some of the titles are really small and may be hard to read, so I'll list them all here:

One Hundred Years of Solitude

The Stand

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Watership Down

Metamorphosis

Oliver Twist

Ada, or Ardor

The Woman in White

Atlas Shrugged

The Count of Monte Cristo

As you can see, most of these titles are either classics or large books (or both). So, of course, I put off reading them in favor of lighter books. In fact, the only book that doesn't fit under either classification is David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. I don't know why I haven't read this book yet other than the fact that I don't typically read humor books. But I'm sure I'll love it once I finally get to it (the reason why I became interested in it was because I had a slight speech problem in elementary school-I slurred my r's-so I thought I could relate while having a good laugh at the same time).

Review: The Handmaid's Tale

2011-11-14T23:03:00.000-05:00

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor
Pages: 311
How I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads: Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining fertility, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

My Thoughts: For the first two-thirds of this book, I was pretty sure I was going to give it a three, which is what I rated the other Atwood books I had read in the past. I really love the stories she has to tell, but I don't like the way she tells them. She opens every one of her books in an unknown place that makes you ask yourself a billion questions about what's going on. Then she very slowly reveals the answers, little by little, throughout the 300 pages or so of the book. It's so frustrating! I hate feeling lost and confused when I'm reading. It sucks the fun out of it.

Luckily, most of the more pressing questions I had about Gilead in this book were answered in the first half and I was able to really enjoy the last 100 pages or so, of which I would give 5 stars. I love how she ended it with The Historical Notes. I thought that was so creative and it made me think over the entire story of The Handmaid's Tale in a whole other way. I actually felt more connected to the narrator, which I didn't feel so much while I was actually reading her story. I don't know why I couldn't feel much for her in the beginning. Maybe I distanced myself in preparation for the horror story I knew was coming when I opened to the first page.

One thing that disappointed about this novel was how easy Atwood had this society come into creation. You take out the President and you take out the Congress and bing-bang-boom, you have a nation now ruled by a fanatic religious group and a society of oppressed women. What really ticked me off was that there was hardly a struggle among the citizens to prevent this from happening! At first, I thought that Atwood had cheated the story by writing it this way, but after some reflection I realized how plausible it all was. People can be shamefully apathetic, especially during times when we most need to stand up and fight.

Review: What I Did for Love

2011-11-04T21:35:00.000-04:00

Title: What I Did for Love (Wynette, Texas #5)
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 401
How I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 3 Stars

Goodreads Summary: How did this happen? Georgie York, once the costar of America's favorite television sitcom, has been publicly abandoned by her famous husband, her film career has tanked, her father is driving her crazy, and her public image as a spunky heroine is taking a serious beating.

What should a down-on-her-luck actress do? Not go to Vegas . . . not run into her detestable former costar, dreamboat-from-hell Bramwell Shepard . . . and not get caught up in an ugly incident that leads to a calamitous elopement. Before she knows it, Georgie has a fake marriage, a fake husband, and maybe (or not) a fake sex life.

It's a paparazzi free-for-all, and Georgie's nonsupporting cast doesn't help. There's Bram's punk-nightmare housekeeper, Georgie's own pushy parent, a suck-up agent, an icy studio head with a private agenda, and her ex-husband's new wife, who can't get enough of doing good deeds and saving the world—the bitch. As for Georgie's leading man, Bram's giving the performance of his life, but he's never cared about anyone except himself, and it's not exactly clear why.

Two enemies find themselves working without a script in a town where the spotlight shines bright . . . and where the strongest emotions can wear startling disguises.

My Thoughts: Sometimes I need a romance fix. Usually, I turn to past favorites that I've read about a dozen times. I very rarely start a new romance novel, mainly because they just don't hold that much appeal to me anymore. My old favorites more than satisfy me when I'm in the mood for an adult romance. However, I always make an exception for Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I fell in love with her Chicago Stars series years ago and she's remained one of my favorite authors ever since.

One of the more interesting aspects of this novel was the similarities between the storyline and the Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie love triangle. Georgie became famous for being in one of America's favorite sitcoms and quickly became America's Sweetheart, moving on to mediocre romantic comedies (Aniston). Georgie is trying to get over her awful, very public divorce with her much more famous movie star husband Lance (Pitt) who left her for a do-gooder exotic actress (Jolie) who he fell in love with while filming a movie with her. Georgie's first plan was to serial date a bunch of cute men to show she was having fun and wasn't destroyed by her divorce, but things go sour on her trip to Vegas and she ends up married to her former costar, Bram, an egotistical selfish jerk that Georgie despises.

I always liked the romantic stories when the couple gets married first (due to some kind of calamity or necessity) and then procede to fall in love. Or, at least, they supposedly fall in love after they're already married but, in actuality, the couple had loved each other all along and their confessions at the end are the most romantic scenes ever. This book doesn't follow that scheme and Georgie and Bram do, in fact, hate each other in the beginning and then suddenly find themselves falling for one another after a couple of months.

I think that is why I gave this book a 3 star rating instead of my usual 5 stars for SEP books. Their love for each other just seemed to come out of nowhere. I couldn't even understand why Georgie fell for Bram, who was only out for his own gain until the very end. I suppose I could believe that their love for one another was sincere, but it wasn't as endearing and heartstopping like it usually is in the romance novels I read. I thought the climactic scene when they both confess their love for each fell flat. It lacked spark.

Not even the side characters interested me that much. I thought Georgie's father's love story was way too rushed for me to care about it (especially since nothing started happening until over halfway through the book), and though I thought Chaz was a really interesting character I couldn't get on board with her and Adam as a couple. They make better friends, and not even close friends at that seeing as how Chaz only ever seemed to talk to Adam when she was calling him fat and lazy.

**********************

From what I said in the beginning of my review, you know that you can expect some more reviews of adult romances in the future. Here is my list of favorites that I will definitely be rereading again someday soon:

Heaven, Texas (Chicago Stars #2) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Nobody's Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars #3) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars #5) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
The Rana Look by Sandra Brown
Tiger Prince by Sandra Brown
Thursday's Child by Sandra Brown
Love's Encore by Sandra Brown
Riley in the Morning by Sandra Brown
Birthright by Nora Roberts
Tears of the Moon (Gallaghers of Ardmore #2) by Nora Roberts
Dance Upon the Air (Three Sisters Island #1) by Nora Roberts
Irish Hearts by Nora Roberts
Time and Again by Nora Roberts
Holding the Dream (Dream #2) by Nora Roberts
Forsaking All Others by Lavyrle Spencer

And that's just part of the list.Can you see why I don't feel the need to read any recently published romance novels? : )

Top Ten Books I Had Strong Emotions Over

2011-11-01T17:57:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

1. Shadowland by Alyson Noel
I was so frustrated by the time I got to the end. I wanted to scream at Ever for being so stupid. I really wanted tear the book up but it was a library book (at least I didn't waste any money on it).

2. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
This book was such a mind f***. It messed with my head and confused me to no end, but I loved it. It's one of my favorite reads of the year.

3. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Spoiler: The scene when the villagers are singing their made-up, creepy nursery-type rhyme about the Blackwell murders while they vandalize and burn down Merricat and Connie's home sent shivers down my spine. One of the most haunting moments ever.

4. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
There are times when I really connect with a character and can feel all of her emotions. I connected in this way with the narrator, Mrs. de Winter. I felt for her during her embarassing moments and the times she felt so lost and out of place. The mystery of Rebecca also really took hold of me. I had never been so caught up and so invested in a mystery plot line before. I just had to know what was up with the former Mrs. de Winter.

5. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
This book had my emotions going haywire. I really felt for the characters and the hardship and tragedy they were going through, and I was so angry at the officers who were putting them through all of that.

6. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
This book was like some kind of crazy, paranormal soap opera. I was literally yelling out loud at the characters, wanting to guide them away from their misguided choices.

7. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
I HATED Mildred, more than any other character in all of the books I've read. She was so selfish and evil. I hated her so much that I couldn't even finish the book, despite the fact that I was reading it for a research paper in my English class. I still ended up making an A on that paper though--I just used Sparknotes to learn what happened in the last 1/4 of the book. :)

8. The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
This book was so funny! I laughed out loud through the whole thing. I really, really love Molly. Her scenes were the best, particularly the one where she greets her husband at the door completely naked and wielding a huge sword because she thinks she's a warrior princess.

9. Viy by Nikolai Gogol
This is actually a short story in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. It gave me nightmares for days.

10. The Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella
I am very susceptible to a character's embarrassment and I feel just as mortified as the character when she finds herself in a humiliating situation. Well, Becky Bloomwood found herself in many, many embarrassing situations, and my face was red with empathy for her the entire time I was reading this series (at least up until book four--Shopaholic and Sister was disappointing for me and I decided that I'd had enough of Bloomwood's antics).

Readathon Wrap-up

2011-10-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

I completed my first readathon!! I didn't make to the end, though. I conked out at the end of Hour 21 as soon as I had finished Anya's Ghost. Still, I think I did pretty well for my first time. I put in about 14 hours (I started the readathon a little late), and I met my goal of three books.

I won a mini-challenge (The Friendship mini-challenge in Hour 15 hosted by Li @ A World of Paper Hearts). She's giving away a surprise(!) book where friendship is a central theme. Can't wait to receive it!
I was also one of the random readers picked to win one of the prizes from Dewey's prize list in Hour 23. I was already in bed by the time that announcement came up so it was a nice surprise this morning. I chose Crusade by Nancy Holder. Sounds like a good one!

End of Event Survey
1. Which hour was most daunting for you?
--I would say Hour 19 was the worst for me. I still had over 100 pages to go for The Sea of Monsters, and I had expected to finish the book three and a half hours earlier. I was worried I would fall asleep before even finishing book 2!
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?
--Charlotte's Web and Anya's Ghost were great books that I sped through.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Readathon for next year?
--I think it would be helpful to use the Mr. Linky more often during the Readathon to see who is participating when. Maybe have it every 4-6 hours or so. That would make it easier for Readers to bounce over to different blogs and check out what's going on and it would make it much easier for Cheeleaders as well.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year's Readathon?
--I can't compare this one to past readathons because this was my first time participating, but I thought it was run really well. The hosts did a wonderful job.
5. How many books did you read?
--Three
6. What were the names of the books you read?
--Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan, and Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
7. Which book did you enjoy the most?
--It's too hard to choose between Charlotte's Web and Anya's Ghost. I'm calling it a tie.
8. Which did you enjoy the least?
--I guess The Sea of Monsters. I enjoyed it, but it took way longer to get through than I was expecting.
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year's Cheerleaders?
--I wasn't a Cheerleader.
10. How likely are you to participate in the Readathon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?
--I will definitely be participating again. I will very likely be a Reader and I'm thinking I would like to give Cheerleading a shot too.

October 2011 Readathon

2011-10-22T13:57:00.009-04:00

**Instead of making a new post for each update, I'll just be adding my updates to this post throughout the day**

I'm so excited to be participating in the readathon for the first time! I wanted to keep this readathon as fun for me as possible, so the first step in that was to not force myself to get up earlier than I wanted to. I don't function too well in the A.M., and I also had to work on a couple of things for class that I procrastinated on, which is why this post is going up kind of late. I'll try to make up for my late entrance by sticking it out until the wee hours of the morning tomorrow and see how close I can make it to the end of the readathon.

I went grocery shopping yesterday in preparation for the readathon, so here's the list of snacks I bought (I wish I could show a picture but my phone is so outdated that I can't transfer photos to my computer anymore--I expect to get a new phone for Christmas, though):

Chef Boyardee Spaghetti (for lunch)
White Cheddar Rice Cakes
Caramel Apples w/ Nuts
Veggie Plate
Vanilla Coke
Hint Flavored Water
Lipton Black Tea
Celestial Seasoning's Madagascar Vanilla Red Tea

Hour 7 (technically Hour 1 for me)
Pages Read: 51
Book Started: Charlotte's Web

I think I'm going to focus on finishing Charlotte's Web before I do any mini-challenges or anything, but I'll see.

Hours 8 & 9
Pages Read: 103

I took a little break and had a late lunch, or "lupper" as my family calls it. I should finish Charlotte's Web in the next hour.

Hours 10-12
Pages Read: 84
Book Finished: Charlotte's Web
Book Started: The Sea of Monsters

I got distracted during hour 10 and most of hour 11 as I was visiting other blogs (FYI--Princess Bookie is having a bunch of giveaways all day today). I also ate one of my caramel apples, and if you didn't know this already, let me tell you that it is impossible to eat a caramel apple and read at the same time.
I did one mini-challenge in hour 11, which was the book trailer mini-challenge hosted by Quirky Girls Read. I chose the trailer for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland because I thought it was very beautifully done.

Hour 13

Mid-Event Survey
1.What are you reading right now?
--The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
2.How many books have you read so far?
--Just one
3.What book are you most looking forward to in the second half of the readathon?
--Anya's Ghost, and I hope I can read at least part of The Body Finder too.
4.Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day?
--None. I just holed up in my room all day. :)
5.Have you had many interruptions?
--Surprisingly, no. All of my suitemates left a few hours ago, so I've had the place to myself for a while.
6.What surprises you most about the readathon, so far?
--I can't say that I've had any surprises so far. I've been trying not to spend too much time online because it tends to eat up the whole hour and I get no reading done. I guess you could say that's a surprise. You can stay awake for the entire readathon and get no reading done if you get too caught up in what's happening online!
7.Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the readathon next year?
--Hmmm . . . not that I can think of. I think the readathon is run really well.
8.What would you do differently as a Reader if you were to do this again next year?
--I might get up early and try doing the readathon from Hour 1 that time, see how much of a different that makes in my experience of it.
9.Are you getting tired yet?
--No, but that's because I didn't get up until noon. :)
10.Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders?
--Well, this is my first year participating, so I don't think I have the experience yet to give tips, but I will share some tips that other experienced readathoners gave me--have lots of snacks, pick short and easy books to read, don't feel you have to finish the book you started but go on to another book if the one you are currently reading isn't holding your interest, take a break (or two or three or however many you need) so you don't feel overwhelmed, and most important of all, keep it fun!!

Hours 14-17
Pages Read: 110
Mini-Challenges: Feed Me, Seymour hosted by Fancy Terrible, Friendship hosted by A World of Paper Hearts, and Song-Identity hosted by Taiwandering

Rereading mini-challenge hosted by The Bluestocking Society
Top Favorite rereads of all-time:
1. Ella Enchanted (favorite middle-grade book-I can devour this one in a couple of hours and it never gets old)
2. I Am Charlotte Simmons (a college-aged protagonist I can really connect with, except for her shallowness)
3. So Many Books, So Little Time (my stand-by to help get me out of those awful reading slumps)
4. An Alchemy of Mind (combining neuroscience, travel, and nature--three of my favorite things :)
5. The Great Gatsby (The imagery in this book is beautiful--I love getting lost in it)
6. The Twilight Saga (I've read this series a dozen times and I'm still not tired of it)

Hours 18-20
Pages Read: 210
Book Finished: The Sea of Monsters
Book Started: Anya's Ghost

Hour 21
Pages Read: 121
Book Finished: Anya's Ghost

Well, it's nearing 5am here and I am exhausted. I think I'm going to call it a day and end my readathon time here. I finished three books, which was my goal! Yay! Now, I need to get some sleep because I have a five page paper to write that's due on Monday.

It's been fun! I look forward to joining in on the next readathon. :)

Re-Readathon (Nov. 18-20)

2011-10-20T21:11:00.000-04:00

Jamie at The Perpetual Page-Turner is hosting a Re-readathon from November 18-20 when participants will spend the weekend rereading books they loved. I was really excited to hear about this because, if you read my last Why I Love Wednesday post, you'll know that I have been dying to reread Kelley Armstrong's Darkest Powers trilogy, and this re-readathon is a perfect excuse to do it! This readathon is a casual, go-at-your-own-pace kind of a deal. If you're interested in participating, click on the first link and sign up there using the Mr. Linky at the bottom of that post.

Top Ten Books I Bought Because of Their Covers or Titles

2011-10-18T00:00:00.012-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

Top Five Books I Bought Because of Their Covers:

Top Five Books I Bought Because of Their Titles:

No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook and Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again: A Symphonic Novel by Edgardo Vega Yunque (I saw this book at my favorite used bookstore and I couldn't resist buying it. I've never seen a book with a title this long. I still haven't read the book yet, even though I bought it years ago when I was still in high school.)

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore (I read this right away when I got it in the mail, and it did not disappoint. It's freakin' HILARIOUS!)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (The cover is pretty awesome too. I'm honestly not sure if I bought it more for the title or for the cover. It might be a tie.)

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy (Technically, I didn't actually buy this book but won it in the first-reads giveaways on Goodreads, but I'd say that 70% of the reason I entered to win was because of the title. It turned out to be one of my favorite Goodreads wins, though that may have had something to do with the fact that the author also sent a box of Puerto Rican goodies along with the book :D )

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson (Alright, I didn't buy this book either-I checked it out from the library-but how could you not be curious enough to pick up this book after reading the title?)

My Readathon Pile!!

2011-10-15T00:00:00.001-04:00

Soooo excited for my first readathon!! It's just a week away now!

I plan to start with Charlotte's Web and end the read-a-thon with Anya's Ghost (I figured a graphic novel would be the easiest book to read after being up and reading for hours), but that's as far as I have planned. I'm still unsure what book I'd like to read after Charlotte's Web, though I'm leaning towards The Sea of Monsters. I am a slow reader, so I'll be proud of myself if I just get through those three books, but I'll do my best to get through all six.

Review: Starstruck

2011-10-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

Title: Starstruck
Author: Cyn Balog
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 256
Where I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 3 Stars

Goodreads Summary: Gwendolyn "Dough" X doesn't think she has much going for her—she carries a few extra pounds, her family struggles with their small bakery in a town full of millionaires, and the other kids at her New Jersey high school don't seem to know that she exists. Thank the stars for her longtime boyfriend, Philip P. Wishman—or "Wish." He moved away to California three years ago, when they were 13, but then professed his love for her via e-mail, and he's been her long-distance BF ever since.

At the beginning of her junior year, though, Wish e-mails that he's moving back to Jersey. Great, right? Well, except that Dough has gained about 70 pounds since the last time Wish saw her, while Wish—according to his Facebook photos—has morphed into a blonde god. Convinced that she'll be headed for Dumpsville the minute Wish lays eyes on her, Dough delays their meeting as long as she possibly can.

But when she sees Wish at school, something amazing happens. He looks at Dough like she's just as gorgeous as he is. But Wish is acting a little weird, obsessed with the sun and freaked out by rain. And the creepy new guy working at the bakery, Christian, is convinced that there's more to Wish's good looks than just healthy eating and lots of sun. He tells Dough that a mark on Wish's neck marks him as a member of the Luminati—an ancient cult of astrologers who can manipulate the stars to improve their lives. Is Wish and Dough's love meant to be—or are they star-crossed?

My Thoughts: I needed a book that I could read in one day (it was the last day of Fall Break before I had to go back to school), and this book fit the bill being around 250 pages and having a paranormal romance story line, which I can always devour quickly. I enjoyed the different paranormal twist about using the stars to influence how others see you. There isn't another paranormal YA novel that I know of that has this same story line, so I liked that it was unique in a genre that tends to follow one trend for months and beats it to death until you're begging for something new.

With that said, I did have a couple of complaints about this book. For one, I thought Dough was way too obsessed with her weight. Every single thought she had dealt with her insecurities about her body, and that is no exaggeration. You couldn't read a single paragraph without her mentioning her "dimply thighs". Of course I can understand a teenage girl being weight-obsessed, but Dough thought of nothing else except how fat she was and how worthless that made her when compared to her gorgeous boyfriend. She should have had more depth than that.

I also had a problem with how the "mystery" of Wish's sudden transformation from geek to god was discovered (I know that there really isn't a mystery surrounding Wish since his secret is given away in the summary, but still). It felt like such a cop out. A teenage boy named Christian happens to get hired at Dough's family bakery at the exact same time Wish moves back, he happens to be from California where Wish just moved from, and he happens to have also dabbled in the magic of the stars. Christian actually knew what Wish was up to after seeing him just once from a distance. I mean, really? Did it all have to happen so fast? The entire book takes place in just a week's time because everything was figured out so quickly.

All in all, I thought Starstruck was a rather mediocre read that served as decent entertainment for one evening. The characters weren't very memorable and the story felt too rushed, but I'd still call it an okay read. I never had a desire to set it down; it kept me turning the pages. I'm still interested in reading Balog's Sleepless because I've heard great things about it from trusted bloggers. I just hope the characters and the story in that book are more fleshed out than they were in Starstruck.

Why I Love Wednesdays: Favorite Series

2011-10-12T18:44:00.000-04:00

Why I Love Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic. Every Wednesday, she discusses a different literary topic. The topic this week is your favorite book series.

Why I Love . . . The Darkest Powers Trilogy by Kelley Armstrong

I was tempted to write about Twilight for this post because it is the only series that I have read numerous times, but I've had Darkest Powers on the brain lately. I've been dying to reread it, but I am one of those people who plan out (or try to plan out) which books I'll be reading months ahead of time, and I am booked solid until February (a lot of this has to do with the Fall/Winter challenge I partake in every year in my College Students group on Goodreads--see the Challenges page above). So, I won't be rereading this series until at least next Spring.

I think Chloe is one of the greatest heroines in young adult literature, mainly because she's so real. She's barely five feet tall, has hair problems, stutters when she's nervous, and she has a very realistic reaction when she discovers that she can see ghosts--she freaks. And even though Chloe isn't as kick-ass as Rose Hathaway in Vampire Academy, she's not a damsel-in-distress either. She takes control and ends up being the leader of the group (or at least she switches off being alpha and beta with Derek), partly because she's the most powerful of everyone else, though that also causes a lot of problems for her, such as bringing corpses to life without even trying.

I also love Chloe and Derek's relationship. For one thing, Derek is not the typical heartthrob love interest, but instead he's described as having bad acne and body odor, both being side effects of his gradual change to a werewolf which causes his hormones to get out of control during puberty. He's also described as being Superman strong, a science/math genius, and a person who puts his family and friends' well-being ahead of his own. I thought he was quite swoon-worthy myself, even if he wasn't male model gorgeous. I love him because of his personality. True, he can be a bit too overprotective and domineering at times, but Chloe holds her own against him. Chloe and Derek have a love/hate relationship for the majority of the trilogy, and I love their bantering. In the third book, the scenes when they both start admitting their feelings for one another make up some of the sweetest moments of the series.

In My Mailbox (1)

2011-10-09T00:00:00.002-04:00

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme that was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie and created by Kristi at The Story Siren.

The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson (received from Macmillan/MacTeen Books)

Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith (received from Macmillan/MacTeen Books)

Hades by Alexandra Adornetto (received from Macmillan/MacTeen Books)

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (won from Tina @ Fantastic Book Review)

As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott (won in a giveaway hosted by Anna @ Anna Reads and received from the author)

Review: Witches of East End

2011-10-08T22:02:00.000-04:00

Title: Witches of East End (The Beauchamp Family, #1)
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Pages: 272
Where I Got This Book: LibraryThing Early Reviewers
Rating; 4 Stars

Goodreads Summary: The three Beauchamp women--Joanna and her daughters Freya and Ingrid--live in North Hampton, out on the tip of Long Island. Their beautiful, mist-shrouded town seems almost stuck in time, and all three women lead seemingly quiet, uneventful existences. But they are harboring a mighty secret--they are powerful witches banned from using their magic. Joanna can resurrect people from the dead and heal the most serious of injuries. Ingrid, her bookish daughter, has the ability to predict the future and weave knots that can solve anything from infertility to infidelity. And finally, there's Freya, the wild child, who has a charm or a potion that can cure most any heartache.

For centuries, all three women have been forced to suppress their abilities. But then Freya, who is about to get married to the wealthy and mysterious Bran Gardiner, finds that her increasingly complicated romantic life makes it more difficult than ever to hide her secret. Soon Ingrid and Joanna confront similar dilemmas, and the Beauchamp women realize they can no longer conceal their true selves. They unearth their wands from the attic, dust off their broomsticks, and begin casting spells on the townspeople. It all seems like a bit of good-natured, innocent magic, but then mysterious, violent attacks begin to plague the town. When a young girl disappears over the Fourth of July weekend, they realize it's time to uncover who and what dark forces are working against them.

With a brand-new cast of characters, a fascinating and fresh world to discover, and a few surprise appearances from some of the Blue Blood fan favorites, this is a page-turning, deliciously fun, magical summer read fraught with love affairs, witchcraft, and an unforgettable battle between good and evil.

My Thoughts: This was a fun, fast read. I'm surprised I enjoyed it so much because I didn't particularly like the characters, and that's usually a must for me in order to enjoy the book--or, if the character is supposed to be unlikeable, then I should at least find him/her interesting.

However, I thought Ingrid was very dull. I don't usually call an independent female character frigid or classify her as a spinter, but there's no getting around that with Ingrid. She turned down every single guy who asked her out (nice, smart guys too), and had been doing so for centuries. I just didn't get it. How could she be so completely closed off to dating? What's her reason for feeling that way? Then there's the mother, Joanna, who I had a hard time getting interested in.

The only one of the three women I liked was Freya, which was surprising since she was cheating on her fiance with his brother, and as a rule I hate anyone who resorts to cheating. There's no excuse for it. However, Freya was the only one with any spice to her and she really carried the story for me.

The ending was amazing! I never saw that plot twist coming and I loved it! And then, of course, we're hit with that awful cliffhanger, which I refuse to really give much weight to. I was really hoping that Freya could have her amazing, meant-to-be relationship with her soulmate, but it looks like there's going to be some major complications. I can only hope that it all turns out to be a horrible misunderstanding in the end. I seriously cannot wait for the second book to see how it all plays out.

Review: Sweet Valley Confidential

2011-10-06T00:00:00.001-04:00

Title: Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later
Author: Francine Pascal
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pages: 293
Where I Got This Book: Library
Rating: 2.5 Stars

Goodreads Summary: Now with this striking new adult novel from author and creator Francine Pascal, millions of devoted fans can finally return to the idyllic Sweet Valley, home of the phenomenally successful book series and franchise. Iconic and beloved identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are back and all grown up, dealing with the complicated adult world of love, careers, betrayal, and sisterhood.

My Thoughts: Sweet Valley High (and all its spin-offs, from Twins to University) were pretty much all I read in elementary school and going into junior high, so obviously this book was a must-read.

**Warning**: There are spoilers in this review, although I use the term spoiler lightly since I believe that this book is incredibly predictable. After the first chapter, you know exactly where the story will end up.

I finished this book in less than two days and I was left with very mixed feelings about it. I loved reading Elizabeth's chapters and learning about her new life as a journalist in NYC. Elizabeth has always been my favorite twin and it was nice to see her living the life she wanted (at least as far as her career was concerned). As for Jessica, I outright hated her in this book. I always knew she was self-centered and narcissistic but she had always had a charm to her too. In this book, there was no charm. She was just a cold-hearted b**** who slept with her twin's fiance.

Thinking back on SVH books, though, I have to admit that Jessica has done some pretty screwed up things in the past. The first thing that comes to mind is when she spiked her sister's drink at a school dance. Elizabeth ended up leaving the party with Jessica's boyfriend (Sam Woodruff? I'm not 100% sure on the name)-not aware she was drunk-and crashed the car, killing Sam instantly. Jessica basically called Elizabeth a murderer and did not fess up to her part in all of it until Elizabeth had already begun defending herself in court for the charge of manslaughter. Yep, pretty screwed up. Alright, enough of memory lane. On with book at hand.

I hated reading about that part when Jessica had the [month long!!] affair with Todd in college. Reading about how it all happened did not justify it for me at all. She didn't even try to stop herself. They kissed once in the car and then sped to Todd's apartment to have sex, while poor Elizabeth was lying oblivious in her room, sick with the flu.

Reading Jessica's parts was not only frustrating for me because of her actions but also because it was just poorly written. There were so many "likes" and "sos" thrown into her narrative, and it was like so totally annoying to read. It also made her sound stupid, as if she really was just some dumb barbie-doll Valley girl.

I have to admit, though, that I started to warm up (a tiny bit) to her character once Elizabeth finally confronted her. The twins had been split apart for the whole book, and the first real scene when they're together doesn't happen until about 200 pages in. Just having the twin dynamic back made me more open to Jessica--I was becoming more like Elizabeth and willing to forgive her for anything. However, despite all that, I thought Elizabeth forgave her twin way too quickly. What Jessica did was incredibly wrong and she had no justification for it (I just wasn't buying that she and Todd were truly in love-they had zero chemistry). Even after everything she did, she still got her happy ending. Ugh.

I was really happy that Elizabeth got together with Bruce Patman in the end, though. I thought they made an interesting couple. It almost made up for the screwed up way that her and Todd's meant-to-be relationship ended.

All in all, I'd recommend that you don't buy this book but check it out from the library instead. I don't think it's worth spending money on, but it's not a waste of time to read either, especially if you're a die-hard SV fan.

Top Ten Book Endings That Left Me With My Mouth Hanging Open

2011-10-04T00:00:00.012-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

I expect to see this book on a lot of people's lists. A very beloved character dies at the end, and that was highly unanticipated. At least, I never saw that coming. When my parents saw the movie, they were in denial at the end and expected to see a resurrection in the 7th movie. I was just like "Sorry Mom and Dad, but said character is gone for good' (Am I being too cautious by not revealing this spoiler? Are any Harry Potter spoilers a secret anymore?)

2. Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy, #3) by Richelle Mead

Noooooo! This can't be! Not Dimitri!! Those were my only thoughts at the end of this book. You just don't expect these things to happen to main characters. It was only the third book in the series (out of six), so I had no idea where this turn of events would lead.

3. Rebecca by Daphe du Maurier

The last sixty pages of Rebecca really sucked me in. I was so keyed up as I tried to guess what would happen to Maxim. I came up with half a dozen scenarios in my head, all of them worse (as in unhappy) endings than what actually happened. I was never so invested in trying to figure out the mystery in a book before. Wow. It was a trip.

4. Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz

WORST CLIFFHANGER EVER!!! I am dying for the second book in this series. I refuse to believe that Freya's soul-mate is actually evil. I mean, he's her true love and has been for centuries. It would be way too sad.

5. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I'm not a huge fan of plays. I like them alright, but every play I've read has been for a class. However, Hamlet I genuinely love and I've reread it a couple of times for pleasure. I think one of the main reasons for that is how mindblowing the ending is. The last scene is just death after death after death. There's no break from the mayhem. The play ends with a bunch of dead bodies littering the floor.

6. The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong

I thought this book was pretty slow for the majority of it. I still really enjoyed it, but there wasn't any action in it at all. That is, there wasn't any action until the very end (as in the last ten pages) when the characters are suddenly being hit from all sides and fighting for their lives.

7. Shadowland (The Immortals, #3) by Alyson Noel

Ugh. This book frustated the heck out of me, and the ending was so awful. I can't believe the decision that Ever made regarding Haven. Hasn't she learned not to trust her impulses by now? I found myself disliking Ever more and more as I was getting into the series and that choice she made at the end of book 3 was the last straw for me. I utterly hated her after that and I decided to stop reading the series. I'm sorry to anyone who loves this series, but I just couldn't handle the characters anymore. I was getting way too annoyed with most of them and the ones that didn't frustrate me were still not quite likeable. I just felt neutral towards them. It didn't make any sense to continue a series that I wasn't enjoying.

8. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

I honestly did not see the twist coming. I was so certain about the identity of the blue-blood woman who was having an affair and the reveal at the end truly came as a surprise to me. I feel like I'm the only one who felt this way though. Based on the reviews I've read, no one else seemed to be thrown by the ending.

9. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

This seems to be a love it or hate it type of book. I, personally, loved it. I can't say that the ending really surprised me because I never completely trusted Elspeth, but it did leave me wondering if Elspeth ever actually had good intentions toward Valentina or if she was just purely manipulative.

10. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

This book didn't actually leave me "with me mouth hanging open," but I needed a tenth book and this was the best one I could think of. I just reviewed it on this blog and I mentioned that the ending was a nail-biter, which is true. There were very little pages left and Miranda was stranded out in the snow, waiting to die. I had no idea how this story was going to conclude, and as the pages dwindled down I was actually getting nervous that the book would just end with Miranda freezing in the snow.

Review: Shiver

2011-10-03T00:00:00.002-04:00

Title: Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic
Pages: 390
Where I Got This Book: Library
Rating: 3 Stars

Goodreads Summary:

the cold.
Grace has spent years watching the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—watches back. He feels deeply familiar to her, but she doesn't know why.

the heat.
Sam has lived two lives. As a wolf, he keeps the silent company of the girl he loves. And then, for a short time each year, he is human, never daring to talk to Grace...until now.

the shiver.
For Grace and Sam, love has always been kept at a distance. But once it's spoken, it cannot be denied. Sam must fight to stay human—and Grace must fight to keep him—even if it means taking on the scars of the past, the fragility of the present, and the impossibility of the future.

My Thoughts: When I first heard of this series, there seemed to be a lot of controversy about whether or not Stiefvater had stolen a few of Meyer's ideas from her series. That and the fact that I'm just not that into werewolves prevented me from giving this book a try. What finally convinced me to read it was discovering that each book in the series was printed using a different colored ink for the text. I thought that this was such a neat idea and it was something I had never come across before, so that made me curious enough to pick it up.

I thought it was well-written and I loved how the author wrote about the wolves. It was interesting that once a person shifted they truly become a wild wolf, with very little to no connection with their human counterpart. I honestly did not see any connection between Shiver and Twilight. Even the mind-reading thing was written quite differently. My only problem with the book is that I couldn't really feel anything for Sam and Grace, and since they are the two main characters that turned out to be a big problem. I didn't hate them or anything--I was just 'meh' about them and their relationship. Actually, if I'm being really honest, I would have to say that I actually did dislike their relationship at times--there were some cutesy scenes between the two that were just cringe-worthy to me.

I also believe that with the way Shiver ended, it could easily have been a standalone novel. I saw no reason why the author felt the need to expand the story into two more books. However, I will continue reading the series to see what the author has come up with, and so that I can hopefully feel something more for Sam and Grace and see their relationship grow.

Review: Life As We Knew It

2011-10-01T01:04:00.001-04:00

Title: Life As We Knew It (Last Survivors, #1)
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books
Pages: 337
Where I Got This Book: Library
Rating: 3.5 Stars

Goodreads Summary: Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

My Thoughts: When I first started this novel and realized it was written in diary entries, I was a little unsure how much I would actually enjoy it-I don't really like epistolary-type novels. However, the writing didn't really come across as a teenage girl's diary. It was very detailed and had full dialogue. This certainly ruined the effect of reading a diary, but that proved to be a good thing for me.

It started out kind of slow, but once I got halfway through I zoomed through the rest. The entire concept of the moon being knocked out of orbit and causing numerous natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) was very realistic to me. However, it did surprise me that no one, according to Miranda, had thought of this possibility when they all first discovered that the meteor would hit. No scientists/astronomers ever seemed to consider how it could affect the earth. I think if I was ever told that a meteor would hit the moon, I would be a little more worried than any of the people in this book appeared to be. Miranda actually thought the whole thing was rather boring--until the meteor actually hit and caused all the disasters of course.

This is a great apocalyptic novel. You can really feel the characters' hunger, how freezing they are in this new world with no sun, and how isolated they feel. They can't risk going out into the world, so the family sticks together and lives out the months of winter in their small house. The small setting actually seems to help bring the story to life more. It becomes very character-driven and each family member was very well-rounded.

I liked how well Miranda's relationship with her Mom was written--all of the tension, heated arguments, and bonding moments mixed in together. It all felt very true to how a teenage girl and her mother would act with one another. And I disagree with Miranda's belief that her younger brother Jonny has the best chance of surviving. Miranda seems like the real survivor in her family, and I'm really rooting for her (for all of them). The ending was quite a nail biter and I loved that.

The second book in the trilogy,The Dead and the Gone, sounds amazing. I'm excited that it takes place in NYC because I've been curious about how things are in other places in the country/world. I wish the last book went on to focus on a third person in another location so I could get an even bigger picture of what the world was like, but it will be nice to continue Miranda's story, so I won't complain that the author decided to finish out the series by going back to Miranda and her family.

Some Awesome Banned Books

2011-09-30T00:00:00.002-04:00

Here are some of the banned/challenged books I love that have been challenged in the past decade (you can find the entire list of banned books here):

Update: The list above was only for 2000-2009 but I found two other lists for 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, and I added books from those lists as links.

And, of course, the Harry Potter series (I was having too hard of a time getting the image to line up, so I decided to just give the link)

Also:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Winterson
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Vegan Virgin Valentine by Carolyn Mackler
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Here's a list of recently challenged books that I want to read:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Beloved by Toni Morrison
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
Staying Fat for Sara Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson (I read a post at Let's Book It about this book for banned book week that convinced me to read this sweet picture book about the true story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo that raise a chick as their own)

Contest Craze: Zombie Survival

2011-09-29T18:42:00.000-04:00

Amanda at That Teen Can Blog is hosting a mini challenge for Princess Bookie's Contest Craze.

The Zombie Apocalypse Preparation Challenge:
(Use any book you've read)

Choose two characters to fight along side you
Choose the fictional world you will be fighting in
Choose a weapon/superpower/ability you will use to fight
Go to this site: http://creativitygames.net/random-word-generator/randomwords/8 and choose one of the 8 words to be your mode of transportation (this WILL get silly!)

My Fighting Partners: Alice (from Twilight) & Emily (from Emily the Strange)

My World: the fictional world from Dark Life--it's a community under the sea! What? There could be zombies there.
My Power: I'm going to borrow Chloe's supernatural ability (from Darkest Powers) and control the dead! Haha! Those zombies won't stand a chance!
Transportation: Lasers (I'm not sure how this would work, but it sounds cool)

Why I Love Wednesdays: Banned Books

2011-09-28T10:00:00.001-04:00

Why I Love Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic. Every Wednesday, she discusses a different literary topic. The topic this week is to share a banned book that you love.

Why I Love . . . Sophie's Choice by William Styron

Reasons why the book was challenged (found at ALA website): "Banned in South Africa in 1979. Returned to La Mirada High School library (CA) in 2002 after a complaint about its sexual content prompted the school to pull the award-winning novel about a tormented Holocaust survivor."

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

The narrator, Stingo, is a struggling writer (he's sort of Styron's persona) who meets a couple living in his building and ends up getting caught in the middle of their tumultuous relationship. I really enjoy books told from the voice of a narrator who is not the main focus of the novel (ex. The Great Gatsby). The reason why reading Sophie's Choice from Stingo's point of view makes the novel so appealing is because the reader finds herself caught up in the mystery of Sophie's character. Why is she in this relationship? Why does this beautiful, smart, kind woman subject herself to the abuse and humiliation of this mentally unstable man? (These may not be such pressing questions for someone who has seen the film, but I read this novel knowing nothing of the plot except what was on the book jacket. I didn't even know the surprise ending. So needless to say, I was furiously turning the pages trying to get more insight into Sophie's motivations.)

There is one highly disturbing scene that I'll never get out of my mind: Sophie is lying in the dirt in the middle of the woods after being hit by a drunk Nathan and Nathan tells her to open her mouth so he can urinate in it, and she does so without hesistation. That scene showed me just how broken Sophie was. She is completely tortured by her past and the choice she was forced to make, and it's heartbreaking. She has lost all respect for herself and believes she deserves nothing good out of life. She seeks out punishment, needing it in order to go on living.

The complexity of this story is amazing. I even found Nathan to be a sympathetic character at times; he was someone whose mental illness had stolen from him the incredible potential he had been born with and turned him into a monster.

Top Ten Books I Want to Reread

2011-09-27T00:00:00.002-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

1. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Every time I am asked what my favorite novel is, I say Crimson Petal without hesitation. This book blew me away when I first read it, and I have never had a book draw me in like this one did before or since. However, it's been six years since I've read it and my memory is getting hazy. I can only remember some little details of the characters now and not much else. I have to reread it soon so that I can have the pleasure of reliving the experience, and also so that I can start talking it up to my friends and have something more to say than "It's amazing! Read it!"

2. Abarat and Days of Magic, Nights of War by Clive Barker

I love everything about this series. The characters are amazing, the fantasy world is fascinating and unique, and the original artwork is beautiful and the icing on the cake. The third book, Absolute Midnight, is coming out in April (well, hopefully it is--the release date has been pushed back about nine dozen times), and I definitely need to reread this series before then.

3. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Fantastic book! At the time I was reading this book, I hadn't added a book to my favorites list in what felt like years, but I added The Namesake immediately after finishing it. Gogol is one of my favorite characters in literary fiction. Plus, I was a huge fan of Russian literature before I even read this book, and I love how big of a part Russian lit played in this novel. It made me want to reread Gogol's short stories (so I guess I'm unofficially adding that collection to this list).

4. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

This book always makes it on my top five favorites list, no contest. I knew I had found a new author that I could read everything by him and love every single book. I want to make a confession to you all, though--I only read the first 2/3 of this book. I don't know what happened. I think I just got distracted and before I knew it, the book was due back at the library and I returned it unfinished. I planned to get back to it as soon as possible once I finished the huge stack of books on my nightstand, but I never did. I bought my own copy a couple of years ago. Now I just need to find the time to read it again, all the way to the end this time.

5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I had to read this book for my ninth grade English class and I hated it. However, so many people say it's their favorite Dickens, and I just want to see if my feelings have changed about it or not. I may have just been too young to enjoy it or it could have been the fact that I was reading it for school under a deadline or it could have been because I thought Estella was such a b****. Regardless of why I disliked it the first time, I want to give it a fair shake before I definitively say whether or not I hate this novel.

6. An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman

I've already read this novel three times (I think that's the most I've ever read one book), and I will be rereading it again (and again). This book started my obsession with all things neuro. And I am so jealous of Ackerman who gets to travel all around the world, observing different species (I mean, she actually plays with baby seals. I want to do that!). I almost stole this book from my high school library. I figured no one would miss it seeing as that I was the only person who had checked it out the entire four years I was there. My conscience wouldn't allow it then, but now I regret not doing it. It would have made a nice souvenir.

7. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This novel made me want to get out my pen and write and write and write (or, more accurately, get out my laptop and type and type and type. This is the 21st century after all). I never had a book inspire that kind of desire to create before. I'll be looking towards this book as my muse for some time to come.

8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is another book that was assigned reading in my ninth grade English class. This one, however, I loved. But since it's been nearly seven years since I read it, all that I know of P&P comes from the Keira Knightley movie (which I also love). I want to get reaquainted with the book now and not rely so much on the film adaptation, no matter how well it may have stayed true to the novel.

9. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

This is the first classic I can ever remember reading for pleasure. My public library had a really pretty pastel pink Oxford World Classics Hardcover, and I fell in love with it (both the story and the lovely pocket-sized book). I now have my own miniature-sized Jane Eyre, which I will have to make time to read real soon since I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't watch the movie until I do, and I really want to watch the movie.

10. Darkest Powers Trilogy by Kelley Armstrong

It's been a year since I finished The Awakening, and I've been dying to go back and read this series all over again ever since I closed that last book. I love Chloe. She's one of the best, most down-to-earth heroines in YA lit. And Chloe and Derek's relationship is so different from any of other romances that I've come across in the genre. I think this is a series that I can read again and again and not get tired of it.

I could add a bunch more books to this list. I'm really enjoy rereading favorites, though I don't reread more than two or three books a year. It's just so hard to make the decision to read a book I've already read, no matter how much I love it, when there are so many amazing unread books out there. Rereading is particularly a problem for me because so many of my favorite books are really long, which is the main reason why I still haven't gotten to The Crimson Petal and the White (894 pages) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (613 pages) yet.

Review: Across the Universe

2011-09-26T00:00:00.006-04:00

Title: Across the Universe (Across the Universe, #1)
Author: Beth Revis
Publisher: Razorbill
Pages: 398
Where I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 5 Stars

Goodreads Summary: Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone - one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship - tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now, Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

My Thoughts: This was a really amazing story, and I immediately added it to my favorites shelf after finishing it. One author described this story the best by calling it science fiction, romance, dystopia, and a mystery all rolled into one. I would even add thriller into the mix. Seriously, this book is great.

The main story line began later than I expected (Amy doesn't wake up from her cryonic sleep until about fifty pages in) but I couldn't say that it started out slow. I thought the build-up in the beginning was really interesting. I loved how Revis included tiny bits of information, such as including made-up words and having the ship residents have different accents than Amy. Being a part of a completely different society from Earth for centuries would cause noticeable changes in the way a person thinks and speaks, and I loved how Revis handled these tiny, yet important, details.

And while I, myself, have not grown tired of the insta-love plot found in most YA lit, I know many others have, so you all will be happy to know that Amy and Elder's relationship grows in a gradual and realistic manner (aside: Did anyone else have a problem getting used to Elder's name? I kept picturing an old man everytime his name was said in the beginning). The book ended with Elder and Amy still just friends more so than boyfriend and girlfriend since the murder mystery took precedence over their hormones.

I would love to see this book turned into a movie, which is a rare thing for me to say. Usually, I can't imagine a book I enjoyed being changed and adapted for film, but this book had such amazing visuals all throughout it. I know it would make an incredible movie series.

*Major Ending Spoiler*

Highlight to read: I know that the doctor said Amy can't be frozen again, and of course it isn't plausible for Elder to be frozen with her since he is the only living Elder/Eldest now, but I still hope that somehow things will work out that they can be frozen together at some point in the series. I really want to see Centauri Earth! It would be a shame if the whole series was stuck in the ship. I feel like the residents, getting all claustrophic and dreaming of a new planet and the open sky!

Contest Craze: Scariest Word

2011-09-25T01:11:00.000-04:00

Contest Craze is hosted by Princess Bookie. This particular mini-challenge is being hosted by Benji @ The Non Reluctant Reader.

What to do:

Pick up a book you're currently reading
Go to Chapter 13 (if your book doesn't have 13 chapters, go to the nearest one)
Pick the scariest word in that chapter
Type the word into Google Images and choose a random picture
Make a post with the book's cover, title, your word, and the image

I am currently rereading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers for a class, which isn't a horror novel by any means, so I wasn't sure how successful I'd be at finding a scary word, but I think I did pretty well.

My Book

My Word: Bloodier

My Image

Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon!!

2011-09-24T19:50:00.000-04:00

I'm sooooo excited to be participating in Dewey's Read-a-Thon for the first time! The readathon will be all day Saturday, October 22nd. There will be a lot of mini challenges and stuff going on at a number of other participating blogs. I just signed-up to be a reader this time, but you can volunteer to be a cheerleader and visit participating blogs to cheer them on as they try to to get through as many books as possible before crashing, or you can host a mini-challenge yourself. Click on the link above if you want to sign up or just find out more about it. There are prizes!!

I'll post what books I'm planning on reading for the readathon in a couple of weeks.

Review: Middlesex

2011-09-24T00:46:00.000-04:00

Title: Middlesex
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 529
Where I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 4.5 Stars

Goodreads Summary: "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

My Thoughts: Epic is the perfect word to describe this book. Cal is an all-knowing narrator, going into great detail of his grandparents' and parents' lives, which he could not possibly know (having not been present), but you never doubt what he is telling you. You go on the journey with him, from the first appearance of the genetic mutation that cropped up due to his grandparents' incestuous relationship to its culmination in Cal's own body, causing him to be born a hermaphrodite.

Eugenides gives each generation of the Stephanides family their due. The reader gets to know the very interesting stories of Lefty and Desdemona's immigration from their burning village in Greece to America's Motor City. The author gives a grand history of Detroit, the beginnings of car factories and division of labor, and the riots of 1967. I can see why Middlesex is considered a great candidate for the title of The Great Amerian Novel. I had never read anything that went into such descriptions of Detroit and its pink nights. Usually, when Detroit crops up as a setting in a book, the author pulls a Forrest Gump, merely naming the city and then leaving the reader with "and that's all I have to say about that." I enjoyed getting to know a bit more about Michigan's largest city.

The book continues slowly through the Stephanides' marriage and the birth of Cal's parents, his father being the son of Lefty and Desdemona while his mother is the daughter of Lefty and Desdemona's cousin, which means (you guessed it) Cal's parents are second cousins. This was the second pairing that defined Cal's fate. Of course, no one knew about Cal's intersexuality until he reached puberty, so for quite some time Cal was raised as Calliope.

Once Cal reached age thirteen or so, I started to get impatient for Cal to finally make the big discovery that the book was leading to, and this is the reason for the half-star deduction. The story really started to drag for me around page 350 or so. Cal began to count down to the day when he would be going to the doctor's appointment to check things out and I would start getting excited, thinking We're finally going to get there in this next section, only to be roadblocked with Cal desribing each day of that last week in detail, taking up precious pages. But once everything was revealed, I was again hooked to the story and I couldn't read fast enough. I found Cal's psychological growth going from female to male fascinating, and I ended the book completely satisfied.

Top 100 YA Books

2011-09-23T17:41:00.000-04:00

I found this list over at What's Your Story, and I thought I'd share it.

Books that I have read are in blue.

Books that I have not read, but want to read are in orange.

1. Alex Finn – Beastly

2. Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones

3. Ally Carter – Gallagher Girls (1, 2, 3, 4)

4. Ally Condie – Matched

5. Alyson Noel – The Immortals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

6. Anastasia Hopcus – Shadow Hills

7. Angie Sage – Septimus Heap (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

8. Ann Brashares – The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1, 2, 3, 4)

9. Anna Godbersen – Luxe (1, 2, 3, 4)

10. Anthony Horowitz – Alex Rider (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

11. Aprilynne Pike – Wings (1, 2, 3)
12. Becca Fitzpatrick – Hush, Hush (1, 2)

13. Brandon Mull – Fablehaven (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

14. Brian Selznick – The Invention of Hugo Cabret

15. Cassandra Clare – The Mortal Instruments (1, 2, 3, 4)

16. Carrie Jones – Need (1, 2, 3)

17. Carrie Ryan – The Forest of Hands and Teeth (1, 2, 3)

18. Christopher Paolini - Inheritance (1, 2, 3, 4)

19. Cinda Williams Chima – The Heir Chronicles (1, 2, 3)

20. Colleen Houck – Tigers Saga (1, 2)

21. Cornelia Funke – Inkheart (1, 2, 3)

22. Ellen Hopkins – Impulse

23. Eoin Colfer – Artemis Fowl (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

24. Faraaz Kazi – Truly, Madly, Deeply

25. Frank Beddor – The Looking Glass Wars (1, 2, 3)

26. Gabrielle Zevin – Elsewhere

27. Gail Carson Levine – Fairest

28. Holly Black – Tithe (1, 2, 3)

29. J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

30. James Dashner – The Maze Runner (1, 2)

31. James Patterson – Maximum Ride (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

32. Jay Asher – Thirteen Reasons Why

33. Jeanne DuPrau – Books of Ember (1, 2, 3, 4)

34. Jeff Kinney – Diary of a Wimpy Kid (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

35. John Boyne – The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

36. John Green – An Abundance of Katherines

37. John Green – Looking for Alaska

38. John Green – Paper Towns

39. Jonathan Stroud – Bartimaeus (1, 2, 3, 4)

40. Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl – Caster Chronicles (1, 2)

41. Kelley Armstrong – Darkest Powers (1, 2, 3)

42. Kristin Cashore – The Seven Kingdoms (1, 2)

43. Lauren Kate – Fallen (1, 2, 3)

44. Lemony Snicket - Series of Unfortunate Events (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

45. Libba Bray – Gemma Doyle (1, 2, 3)

46. Lisa McMann – Dream Catcher (1, 2, 3)

47. Louise Rennison – Confessions of Georgia Nicolson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

48. M.T. Anderson – Feed

49. Maggie Stiefvater – The Wolves of Mercy Falls (1, 2, 3)

50. Margaret Peterson Haddix – Shadow Children (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

51. Maria V. Snyder – Study (1, 2, 3)

52. Markus Zusak - The Book Thief

53. Markus Zusak – I am the Messenger

54. Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

55. Mary Ting – Crossroads

56. Maureen Johnson – Little Blue Envelope (1, 2)

57. Meg Cabot – All-American Girl (1, 2)

58. Meg Cabot – The Mediator (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

59. Meg Cabot – The Princess Diaries (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

60. Meg Rosoff – How I live now

61. Megan McCafferty – Jessica Darling (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

62. Megan Whalen Turner – The Queen’s Thief (1, 2, 3, 4)

63. Melina Marchetta – On the Jellicoe Road

64. Melissa de la Cruz – Blue Bloods (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

65. Melissa Marr – Wicked Lovely (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

66. Michael Grant – Gone (1, 2, 3, 4)

67. Nancy Farmer – The House of the Scorpion

68. Neal Shusterman – Unwind

69. Neil Gaiman – Coraline

70. Neil Gaiman – Stardust

71. Neil Gaiman – The Graveyard Book

72. P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast – House of Night (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 )

73. Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials (1, 2, 3)

74. Rachel Caine – The Morganville Vampires (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

75. Rachel Cohn & David Levithan – Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

76. Richelle Mead – Vampire Academy (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

77. Rick Riordan – Percy Jackson and the Olympians (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

78. Rom LcO’Feer – Somewhere carnal over 40 winks

79. S.L. Naeole – Grace (1, 2, 3, 4)

80. Sabrina Bryan & Julia DeVillers – Princess of Gossip

81. Sarah Dessen – Along for the Ride

82. Sarah Dessen – Lock and Key

83. Sarah Dessen – The Truth about Forever

84. Sara Shepard – Pretty Little Liars (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

85. Scott Westerfeld - Leviathan (1, 2)

86. Scott Westerfeld - Uglies (1, 2, 3, 4)

87. Shannon Hale – Books of a Thousand Days

88. Shannon Hale – Princess Academy

89. Shannon Hale – The Books of Bayern (1, 2, 3, 4)

90. Sherman Alexie & Ellen Forney – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

91. Simone Elkeles – Perfect Chemistry (1, 2, 3)

92. Stephanie Meyer – The Host

93. Stephanie Meyer – Twilight Saga (1, 2, 3, 4)

94. Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees

95. Susan Beth Pfeffer – Last Survivors (1, 2, 3)

96. Suzanne Collins – Hunger Games (1, 2, 3)

97. Suzanne Collins – Underland Chronicles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

98. Terry Pratchett – Tiffany Aching (1, 2, 3, 4)

99. Tonya Hurley – Ghost Girl (1, 2, 3)

100. Wendelin Van Draanen – Flipped

Obviously, I have way more books on my to-read shelf than my read shelf, but isn't that how it always is?

Review: The Gathering

2011-09-23T00:00:00.009-04:00

Title: The Gathering (Darkness Rising, #1)
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 359
Where I Got This Book: Own
Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads Summary: Sixteen-year-old Maya is just an ordinary teen in an ordinary town. Sure, she doesn't know much about her background - the only thing she really has to cling to is an odd paw-print birthmark on her hip - but she never really put much thought into who her parents were or how she ended up with her adopted parents in this tiny medical-research community on Vancouver Island.

Until now.

Strange things have been happening in this claustrophobic town - from the mountain lions that have been approaching Maya to her best friend's hidden talent for "feeling" out people and situations, to the sexy new bad boy who makes Maya feel . . . . different. Combine that with a few unexplained deaths and a mystery involving Maya's biological parents and it's easy to suspect that this town might have more than its share of skeletons in its closet.

My Thoughts: I thought this novel made a fun read, though it didn't suck me in quite as much as the Darkest Powers trilogy did.

Despite following the same story line as the previous trilogy, it had a completely different feel. Instead of following a group of teenagers with supernatural abilities, this book really only focused on Maya and her discovery of her new power. Her power, plus a handful of other teens' powers that were merely hinted at, were very different from the powers we came across in the past trilogy. I won't spoil what Maya's supernatural ability is, but I will say that Maya never truly experienced it. She only discovered that she possessed it. Because of this, I thought that the book was kind of slow going. There was also very little mention of the science experiment conspiracy, which was brought into the book only at the very end, leaving us with a heck of a cliffhanger.

I enjoyed the characters. Maya is a very intelligent and kind person who has a great interest in animals and animal care. She even has her own menagerie in her backyard, where she keeps injured animals that she finds in the woods and nurses them back to health. One of those animals, a cougar, became so attached to Maya that he refused to leave once his leg healed, so he basically hangs around like a large house cat. I thought it was awesome that Maya had a cougar for a pet (I've always wanted a white tiger for a pet, myself). Maya's parents were great too. They were present throughout the story, which was a nice change for a young adult novel, but while they were being good, repsonsible parents, they also let Maya have her independence and trusted her maturity and good sense.

Now for the love triangle. I'm still not sure what to think about the budding relationship between Maya and Rafe. I thought Rafe was alright, but I didn't feel like we got to know him too well in this first book, so I couldn't really form an opinion about him. At the moment, I prefer Maya's best friend Daniel. I think he's a nicer, more geniune person. They've known each other all of their lives, and they're a better fit for each other, in my opinion. Unfortunately, Maya views Daniel as just a friend, and there wasn't any romantic chemistry between them. Daniel was still getting over the death of his girlfriend (who was also Maya's best friend), so their relationship stayed strictly platonic in this book. I'm hoping that will change in The Calling.

All in all, I thought the book was very well-written, and I found this new direction with the science experiment plot line (though not as entertaining as the first trilogy) to be very refreshing and interesting. I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

My 5 Most Anticipated Books For 2012

2011-09-22T15:44:00.001-04:00

These are the five books I'm most looking forward to in 2012.

Contest Craze @ Princess Bookie

The Calling by Kelley Armstrong (Expected Release Date: April 2012)

Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker (Expected Release Date: April 12, 2012)

A Million Suns by Beth Revis (Expected Release Date: January 10, 2012)

Bloodrose by Andrea Cremer (Expected Release Date: January 24, 2012)

Fever by Lauren DeStefano (Expected Release Date: February 21, 2012)

Contest Craze Mini Challenge: Lucky Number 7

2011-09-21T21:17:00.000-04:00

This is a mini challenge for Princess Bookie's Contest Craze. Jessi from The Elliot Review is hosting the second mini challenge.

What to do:

Open a book you are currently reading
Turn to page 7
Count to the 7th word
If the word is an article (a, an, the) go to the next real word
Type the word into Google Images and select a picture you like that pertains to that word

Book: Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

The 7th word was to, so I went on the next word, which was read

Why I Love Wednesdays: Free or Previous Topic

2011-09-21T14:35:00.001-04:00

Why I Love Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic. Every Wednesday, she discusses a different literary topic. The topic this week can be about anything, and I choose to write on a past post about my favorite reading weather.

Why I Love . . . Reading During a Snow Storm!

I lived in California when I was younger, so I never knew how much I loved the snow until I went to college in Massachusetts. I found out that there was nothing more relaxing than sitting in a comfy lounge chair in a nearly empty library in Janurary, watching the snow fall as I read. Reading in such a warm, cozy environment while hearing the whistling of the wind outside, well, it just makes the experience that much better.

I get excited when I read a book with a winter setting and know that I can look out the window and see that my world looks exactly the same as the fictional world that I'm visiting. I get equally excited reading about a warm setting and know that I can live in two completely different places at once, the summer garden in my book and the quiet library amid a winter storm. After experiencing my first Massachusetts winter, I vowed that I would always live in a place where it snowed. I can see myself years from now still enjoying the snowfall from my reading chair with the crackling fireplace in the background.

Fall/Winter Task Challenge

2011-09-21T01:16:00.001-04:00

I am participating in the Fall/Winter Task Challenge in the College Students group on Goodreads. The challenge started on September 6th and it will end at 11:59 pm on February 20, 2012. For more details about the challenge, its rules and the requirements for the tasks, view the Task List thread.

Fall/Winter Challenge Task List:

5 Points
1. Judge a book by its cover: Read a book that has a cover which represents Fall or Winter to you ( can have a pumpkin, snow, fall leaves or some other picture that is obvious to the season, or it can have something that reminds you personally of the season, such as a fireplace or a football).
2. It's all in the title: Read a book with the month September, October, November, December, January or February in the title.
3. President's Day: Read a book about a president (or a similar ruler for those outside of the U.S.) The book can be current, historical, fiction, or nonfiction.
4. Holiday stress relief: Read any book about anything just to beat the stress!
5. I love Halloween! Read a book about the holiday or any related Halloween creature (witch, vampire, ghost, ect)
6. Alcoholics Anonymous: Read a book about alcohol, an alcoholic, or has a type of liquor in the title.
7. Winter either bites with its teeth or lashes with its tail: Read a book that has teeth or a tail on the cover (this can be animal teeth/tail, a ponytail, teeth on a comb, tail of a comet, jet stream from a plane or rocket, ect)
8. Back to School Assignment: This one is for members of the College Students group who are assigned to pick a book for one of the members participating in the challenge.

10 Points
1. Finish the to do list: Go to Random Number Generator. Give it the parameters for how many books are on your To Read list and read the corresponding book.
2. College Bound: Read a book from the College Bound Reading List.
3. Home for the Holidays: Read a book by a local author. This would be someone that lives in your state for people in the U.S. and your country or region for those that live outside of the U.S.
4. Ahoy There Matey: Read a book about pirates, either fiction or nonfiction, or with the word pirates or its cognates in the title.
5. Major Issues? Read a book related to you major or where the main character is studying or working in your field.
6. Bit by the travel bug: Read a book set in a country that you want to visit but haven't gotten to yet.
7. Color is joy: Read a book with your favorite color in the title or where the cover is predominantly your favorite color.
8. What comes first? Read a book that a movie you have seen was based on. No rereads!

15 points:
1. Military Awareness: There are many military related “holidays” during Fall and Winter: Read a book that has soldiers in the story (past or present), is about a famous battle or war, or is a non fiction account of someones’ life as it is related to a war.
2. This is a challenge after all: Read a genre that you rarely or never read.
3. Mid-Autumn Festival, Moon Festival, Lantern Festival and Mooncake Festival: All names for the festival celebrated in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and the Phillipines. Read a book about one of these cultures, or where the people celebrate an Autumn festival as a main part of the book.
4. Winter Vacations: Read a book that is about your Dream Vacation to be taken in the winter. Mine, since I hate cold and winter, would be a book about going somewhere tropical for a warm vacation during the cold months. Others, that enjoy that white death that falls from the sky, can read about skiing, or sledding, or even just a trip to somewhere cold.
5. Historical Fiction: Choose an era and read a book set during that era.
6. The Perfect Gift: Read a book about searching for something, (treasure, lost animal, keys, etc.) just not searching for a person.
7. Teacher Appreciation: Read a book about a terrific teacher or one that your favorite teacher in junior high or high school recommended that you never got around to reading.
8. Family Influences: Read a book written by an author that shares a first or last name to either of your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or siblings.

20 Points:
1. Group Read: (For members of College Students group) Read a past group read OR a group read that happens during one of the months of this challenge AND post to the discussion thread what you thought about the book.
2. To Be Continued..... Read either book 1 and 2 of a series or start on the next 2 books of a series you have already started.

25 points
1. ABC’s and 123’s: Read a book with a “A” “B” or “C” starting the title and another book with a number in the title. To make it a bit easier, you may take the, a, if, etc. off the title to get to the A, B or C and the number can be any number, it doesn’t have to be 1, 2 or 3.
2. Proud of Your Name: Read two books: Each title must start with one of your initials. I was going to limit this to first and last names, but some of us may have difficulties with that, so if you have middle, maiden, whatever names, take your initials, and choose some books. May drop A or The at the beginning of the title in you need to.
3. Classic’s Revisited: Read a classic and a modern adaptation of that classic. Tell us which you liked better.
4. The beginning of the End: Read two books: The title of the first books’ last word should be the first word of the title to the second book. You may drop A, The, If, And, etc. Example: God on Trial by Peter Irons and The Trial of Socrates by IF Stone for God on Trial Trial of Socrates.
5. Time after Time: Read a book that takes place all in one day and read another book that spans over several years.
6. These 2 things are not the same: Read two books that have the same title. Discuss if they were similar, different or a mix. This may be a bit tricky, but I will allow things like Woods or The Woods to be the same. Or like Shiver and Shiver: A Novel. Try to keep them as similar as possible, but you can drop things like A Novel written after the main part of the title.
7. Keep your Friends Close: choose one of your friends on GoodReads and look at their read lists. Choose a book they gave 4 or 5 stars and one they gave 1 or 2 stars and read them both. Post whether you agree with their rating or disagree.
8. Job Satisfaction: read a book about your ideal job or where the main character has your ideal job, and read a book about a job you think would be lousy (again, or where the main character has a job your think would be lousy) Which do you like better? Any career changes coming?

My Fall/Winter Challenge Task List (subject to change)

5.1 Dry Ice by Bill Evans
5.2 The October Country by Ray Bradbury
5.3 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
5.4 Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens
5.5 Dark Passages by Kathryn Leigh Scott
5.6 Call Me When You Land by Michael Schiavone
5.7 Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
5.8 The Guernsay Literary and Potato Pie Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

10.1 The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
10.2 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
10.3 The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
10.4 Steel by Carrie Vaughn
10.5 Cassie Draws the Universe by P.S. Baber
10.6 The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
10.7 Hereafter by Tara Hudson
10.8 The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

15.1 Atonement by Ian McEwan
15.2 Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
15.3 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
15.4 Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
15.5 31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan
15.6 The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
15.7 The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
15.8 Stiff by Mary Roach

20.1 Bossypants by Tina Fey
20.2 Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty
25.1 As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott and 360 Degrees Longitude by John Higham
25.2 Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez and Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stepanie Perkins
25.3 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and Wicked by Gregory Maguire
25.4 Emily the Strange by Rob Reger and Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow
25.5 After Dark by Haruki Murakami and ~~Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides~~
25.6 Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine and The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney
25.7 The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hopkin and Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
25.8 The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman and The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

I've only finished one book so far, but I'm sure I'll catch up.

Review: I am Charlotte Simmons

2011-09-20T19:19:00.000-04:00

Title: I am Charlotte Simmons
Author: Tom Wolfe
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 738
Where I Got This Book: Library
Rating: 5 stars

Goodreads Summary: Tom Wolfe, the master social novelist of our time, the spot-on chronicler of all things contemporary and cultural, presents a sensational new novel about life, love, and learning--or the lack of it--amid today's American colleges.

Our story unfolds at fictional Dupont University: those Olympian halls of scholarship housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

As Charlotte encounters the paragons of Dupont's privileged elite--her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus--she is seduced by the heady glamour of acceptance, betraying both her values and upbringing before she grasps the power of being different--and the exotic allure of her own innocence.

With his trademark satirical wit and famously sharp eye for telling detail, Wolfe draws on extensive observations at campuses across the country to immortalize the early-21st-century college-going experience.

My Thoughts: I once read a book memoir where the author encouraged reading books that take place in settings completely different from where you are. If you are visiting your grandparents in Palm Desert, you should bring Smilla's Sense of Snow with you in order to transport yourself away from the arid desert and into a winter wonderland. If you are back home for Thanksgiving Break you should pick up The Crimson Petal and the White so that for a moment you are living in nineteenth century England among noblemen and prostitutes. I am all for this theory of good book reading, but there is something to be said about reading what you know. I enjoy reading books about people and places I feel familiar with.

That is why when I first attended Mount Holyoke College about three years ago, I craved books of the college genre; one book in particular. I could not seem to get my mind off of the Tom Wolfe novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, which I had read in high school. I felt close to the title character Charlotte because we were both North Carolina girls from the foothills attending a New England college and attempting to carve out a successful future for ourselves.

During my first couple of weeks at Mount Holyoke every new college experience I had (i.e. unpacking my things in my new dorm, using the communal bathroom, eating in the dining hall) caused my thoughts to turn toward similar scenes in Charlotte Simmons. Each day, my preoccupation with the book got worse and worse until I finally reached a point where I thought enough was enough, and so I walked to the college library to check out the Tom Wolfe novel and began reading it for the second time. It was better than the first time. I could actually relate to Charlotte so much more that time around as a first-year college student trying to adjust to college life. I would read the scene of her unpacking her things in her dorm on the fifth floor and it would strike me that I was also living on the fifth floor of my dorm. I would read about Charlotte’s first time using the coed bathroom (the disgusting scene where two boys are on the toilet making crude bowel noises and boasting about it) and I would suddenly feel very grateful that I had decided to go to a women’s college. In scene after scene, chapter after chapter, I experienced a sense of familiarity that was a blessing to have during that time when I was trying to adjust to new surroundings.

I'm going to be honest and say that Charlotte is not the most likeable character. She's a genius, sure, and I love the fact that she can read a neuroscience book for pleasure, but she is also shallow and judgmental--and a hypocrite. She feels really upset when people look down on her because of her small-town roots, but she looks down on others because she doesn't think they have anything to offer her, either intellectually or socially, as she tries to climb the ladder of popularity. None of the other characters in the book are too likeable either. There is Charlotte's rich, superficial roommate Beverly, the hot frat boy Hoyt whose callousness and borderline abuse causes Charlotte to suffer a break down in the middle of the year, the geeky journalism student Adam whose high ambitions get the best of him, and then there's Jojo, the dumb student-athlete (or at least he acts dumb in order to protect his reputation among his basketball buddies) who Charlotte ends up using to reach the high rungs of that social ladder.

If you can look past these character flaws, however, this book really gets into something fascinating. I would recommend it to any college-bound/university student. I am Charlotte Simmons is a gem among the rare genre of books with college-aged protagonists.

Top Ten Books I Feel As Though Everyone Has Read But Me

2011-09-20T01:00:00.001-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
It seems that everyone I know has read this book, even my non-reader friends, and they all loved it.

2. If I Stay
I've heard a number of great things about this book, and I brought my copy to college with me this semester. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to it before the end of the year.

3. Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
I'm making this one my Christmas read! It is one of my tasks for the Fall/Winter Challenge in the College Students group on Goodreads (I plan on posting my entire task list sometime this week.)

4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I want to read this book so badly! It's a favorite of many of my bookish friends.

5. 1984
I swear, every single friend of mine on Goodreads has read this book. It makes me antsy seeing all of them have it on their read shelf while mine is still listed as to-read. I had to read a couple of short excerpts from it for my Utopian/Dystopian Literature class last year, and I really enjoyed what I read. I need to move this book up to the must-read list.

6. A Thousand Splendid Suns
You all don't have to sell me on this book. I know I have to read it. I see it on everyone's favorites list.

7. The Host
I'm a Twilight fan. I admit it. I've heard from many other Twilight fans (as well as Twilight haters) that this book is even better.

8. The Book Thief
I asked for this book for Christmas last year and was so happy when I unwrapped it Christmas morning. I thought I would read it right away, but it's still sitting there almost a year later.

9. The Shining
I've read a couple of Stephen King books but none of his classics. I've seen the movie with Jack Nicholson a few times, and I bought the book at a library sale a couple of years ago. It's just lying in a drawer gathering dust (yes, I organize my books Rory Gilmore style, stacked randomly in my dresser drawers). :)

10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I've been wanting to read this book since middle school. Why haven't I gotten to it yet?

My First Post!!

2011-09-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

Hey all you readers and bloggers,

I am happy to report that I finally have my very own book blog! I've been following blogs for about a year now, and I've decided to stop being a lurker and to join the blogosphere community. Please bear with me as I try to navigate this crazy new world and struggle to get my blog going. I'm still learning all of the little things! Seriously, I know next to nothing about blogging and I'm starting from ground zero. However, I've always loved reading and I've been an active member of Goodreads for a few years now. I have a number of reviews already written that I look forward to sharing with you, and there are quite a few memes from my favorite blogs that I am dying to participate in.

Happy reading everyone :)

All the Things She Read

Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Wicked Winter Read-a-Thon Updates and Challenges

Wicked Winter Read-a-Thon

Review: Pink by Lili Wilkinson

Why I Love Wednesdays: Book Challenges (!!)

Why I Love Wednesdays: Types of Endings

Top Ten Bookish Resolutions

Teaser Tuesday (1)

2012 Chunkster Reading Challenge

Review: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

My Life According to the Books I've Read in 2011

Review: In the Forests of the Night

Top Ten Childhood Favorites

My New Header!!

Re-Readathon Update

2012 Challenges

Top Ten Books That Have Been Gathering Dust On My Shelves

Review: The Handmaid's Tale

Top Ten Books I Read Outside of My Comfort Zone

Review: What I Did for Love

Top Ten Books I Had Strong Emotions Over

Readathon Wrap-up

October 2011 Readathon

Re-Readathon (Nov. 18-20)

Top Ten Books I Bought Because of Their Covers or Titles

My Readathon Pile!!

Review: Starstruck

Why I Love Wednesdays: Favorite Series

In My Mailbox (1)

Review: Witches of East End

Review: Sweet Valley Confidential

Top Ten Book Endings That Left Me With My Mouth Hanging Open

Review: Shiver

Review: Life As We Knew It

Some Awesome Banned Books

Contest Craze: Zombie Survival

Why I Love Wednesdays: Banned Books

Top Ten Books I Want to Reread

Review: Across the Universe

Contest Craze: Scariest Word

Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon!!

Review: Middlesex

Top 100 YA Books

Review: The Gathering

My 5 Most Anticipated Books For 2012

Contest Craze Mini Challenge: Lucky Number 7

Why I Love Wednesdays: Free or Previous Topic

Fall/Winter Task Challenge

Review: I am Charlotte Simmons

Top Ten Books I Feel As Though Everyone Has Read But Me

My First Post!!