Review: The Gathering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?