Wednesday, July 20, 2011

WWW Wenesday (7)

This is hosted at Should Be Reading.  I'll answer these questions
  • What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?-  Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly- this is just amazing so far best book I've read since Delirium.  How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein- a book about writing that has helped not only with my book but with my reviews.

What did you recently finish?-     

A Dog's Purpose- awesome book.  It's so cute, yet suspenseful, and it made me look at my dog in a whole different way.

What do you think you'll read next? - I have a few that I want from my library.
Iron Queen, Girl Parts, Diverngent, Gone, Eon, and surprisingly a lot more, but I can't remember the names.  It really depends what I'm in the mood for.




Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday (19)

 

This is hosted at The Brooke and the Bookish!   Today's topic is...
Top Ten Books that Should be Required Reading for Teens
Here it is in no particular order than how they rolled off my brain.
  1. Outsiders-  This book was amazing and was one of the things that really helped me grow up during that awkward in-between stage.  I used to not like these people that went to my school.  I called them "Preps" because they played sports and I was convinced that they all hated me and my friends.  After reading this book, I realized that that was a really stupid thing for me to believe.
  2. Harry Potter- It's now a classic so now is the time to read it no matter what age you are.
  3. Hunger Games- So well done, and with such a strong message.  I highly reccomend that everyone read them all, but the real required reading is Mockingjay.  After I finished it I felt as if one of dear friends had died, and I cried and grieved for hours.  During this time I realized just how lucky Americans are not to have ever had a war here.  We should be grateful to our vetrans for that.
  4. Revolution- I haven't even finished this book yet, but this is how writing should be.  Not the crap publishers have been feeding us since Twilight hit the bestseller list.  This is a real novel.
  5. Night by Elie Wiesel- A powerful book about a boy who lived through the Holocaust.  Everyone should know what happened there so that it never happens again.
  6. A Dog's Purpose- This book was really well done, and why would you want to read about dogs? because it's just about dogs it's about reincarnation, and finding your purpose.  A thought-stirrer, and it's really funny and suspenseful that I read it quite quickly.
  7. For Twilight Fans- The Tantalize trilogy- how a vampire novel should be done!
That's all that I can think of for required reading, but there are lots of other goods ones out there like...Delirium.  Try that one out!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Waiting on Wenesday (1)

This is hosted at Breaking the Spine, see you there.  The book I choose this week is Shut out By Kody Keplinger.  It comes out September 5th, and I can wait to read it.  The author wrote Duff a book that caught me by surprise.


Synopsis: Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part, Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention.

Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: she and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming.
From Goodreads.com

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Website Weekend

BookBlogsNing

This is a directory for book blogs.  I discovered this site not to long ago and I already have people e-mailing me to welcome me to the site.  From my explorations of the site I can see that there are two prime uses for it.

Go to fullsize image1. Finding Blogs-  There are a number of ways to find new blogs: blog hops, other sites sidebars, memes, etc, etc.  This site helps you find blogs in a way simalar to the set up of fanfiction, it has a picture of the blog, and a description of it so that you can know what genre the blog features. There are several different way to search through the list of blogs, or you can click the Random Blog button and the site will take you to a random blog but there's no telling what genre that blog will be. 
              I found a blog yesturday called You're Killing Me, it's not a mystery book blog, but it has killer reviews!!!  She really goes into to depth of what annoyed her and what could have been improved.  Nothing is left out she talks about the plot, characters, and suspense (etc) used by the book rather than just how much she liked it.  I spent at least two hours last night just going through reviews of books I was planning to read. 

2. Networking your Blog- If you don't have a blog this site is still very useful for exploring the book blogosphere, but if you have a blog then this site is just the type of thing that you need.    There are tons of communites that allow you to post reviews and a bits about your blog to help you get followers.  This site is also mainly dominated by bloggers so this is the perfect oppurtnity to talk to other bloggers if you have any questions or need advice.
Go to fullsize image

If you are on this site and have anything to add please feel free to comment, and add to the post.

Here is the link for the site.  Thank you!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday (18)

This is hosted by The Brooke and the Bookish.  This week's question is...Top Ten Rebels in Literature.  Here it is in no particular order.

  1. Vi from Possession-  she fights every bit of society that she lives in but that's not why I picked her.  She's not only a rebel but she's a very well done character that is human in the way she acts and thinks.
  2. Diana from The Luxe- though I loath all of the other spoiled girls in this novel Diana goes against them with her rebellious attitude.
  3. Calla from Nightshade-  she finds out the truth, and rebels against her society to escape the lie.  She chooses the forbidden love over her destined one.
  4. Julie from A Time for Dancing-  She has cancer, but since the chemo makes her feel so bad she rebels against it and stops treatment.  Although this was a very sad novel I admired her for standing up for herself even though it was a hard choice to make.
  5. Oscar from Candor-  I really have nothing to say for this one except that it's his dad that is controlling everyone, yet he goes against it.
  6. Amy from Across the Universe-  Eveyone is unlike her, yet she still stands up for herself when they go against her.
  7. Katniss from Hunger Games- she didn't even know what she was doing it was just in her nature to rebel.

Those are all of the important ones.  In today's books rebels aren't hard to find but wheiter they are real people or not...that's the difference between making the list, and being within the pages of the book that is thrown across the room in one of my "Twilight" fits.

Body Finder Review

The Body Finder by: Kimberly Derting
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pagers: 327
Genre: Paranormal Romance
From: Barnes and Noble

Synopsis: Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes that the dead leave behind in the world... and the imprints that attach to their killers.

Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find the dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer
and closer to discovering a killer... and becoming his prey herself. From Goodreads.com

The synopsis sounds pretty good, and many blogs have been saying good things about this book.  It's a light read so it will help  me relax this summer.  Why not go ahead and buy the book? 
        I was heading for vacation in Florida and there was this particular summer read I needed to buy.  The library and Paperbackswap didn't have it.  There was twenty dollars in my wallet so why not?  There were quite a lot of people in there that day so I kept my head low.  Going through all the Twilight- like book filled shelves embarrassed me especially when a teenage girl and her boyfriend walked past me to look at them.  Finding the book I wanted, Spring Break by Katherine Applegate, was easy enough, but it was just a paperback and there were so many others from my TBR list.  Carrie Ryan's new book caught my eye but I put it down in favor of a lighter read.  Remember, we all make mistakes, some more stupid than others.  This was the book I picked up.  Does anybody want it?
        The beginning drew me in like the reviews promised.  The suspense kept the story rolling and the pages turning.  What really got me was the killer's point of view.  The way he talked about the "hunt"  finding a girl then convincing her to come with him was so creepy.  My paranoia subconsciously grew from just the thought of...it became a lot easier to scare me this week.  Violet's abilities weren't a new idea, but the way the author described them was very good.  That's unfortunately where the good comments end. 
         Violet quickly proved to be a stupid character.  Her crush on Jay made her blind to her surroundings.  Grady who seemed like a nice guy, changed in a split second to a sex crazed drunk.  All of the other girls were shallow in comparison to her, including her own friends.  The entire high school scene was quite stereotypical and infuriating to see all of these characters acting like MTV stars.  Jay himself was a whining brat who wouldn't talk to Violet when he was mad like a mature adult to Superman who was always in the right place at the right time to stop stupid Violet from letting the Killer kill her.  Of course he had to save Violet because after they finally got together and Violet stopped looking at him with longing eyes and describing how much he had grown into this sex god they started making out anytime they could.  Her parents of course let the door be closed and didn't suspect a thing. 
         Kimberly was already making me pretty mad, but there was still a mystery to slove.  The killer's Point of view gave away whodoneit too early so when the story should have been picking up and building it fell off the plot mountian and shattered at the bottom.  A pretty huge dissapointment.

Characters- 4
Plot- 3
Suspense- 4
Theme- 2
Mood- 4
Pace- 3
Cover- 4
Overall- 3.5

the sequel that I'm not going to read

Friday, July 1, 2011

Book Blogger Hop (8)

This is hosted by Crazy-for-books.com.  And this week's question is...
“What keeps you reading beyond the first few pages of a book, and what makes you want to stop reading a book and put it back on the shelf?“

My Answer: There are a lot of things that make me read a book the voice, a character I would like to talk to, an interesting storyline, etc, etc.  Usually what makes me put down a book is a stupid stereotypical plot, character, or something else that is just childish.  Like the Clique series I couldn't survive through the first few chapters because those girls were just such brats and they weren't even doing anything interesting.
Thanks for reading this!  Do me a favor and check out the rest of my blog.  Pretty Please?