It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (7/4/14)

A weekly meme hosted by Sheila @ Book Journey 

What I am Currently Reading:

WarBreaker by Brandon Sanderson
I am listening to this on audiobook borrowed from my library via OneClickDigital. I haven't listened to an audiobook in a long time, hopefully I will find the time for it. This will be the second Sanderson book I have read, the first being SteelHeart which I quite enjoyed.

Have you read any Brandon Sanderson? What did you think?

What's your experience/opinion on audiobooks?

      

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore
This is the first funny book I have read in a long time. It's also my first Christopher Moore book.  Have you read Christopher Moore? Any suggestions of his other books I should try if I like this one?

          

What I Plan to Read this Week:

This week I plan to get all of these library books read and read them I will. 

What are reading and what do you plan to read this week?

Sunday Post: Weekly Wrap-Up (6/4/14)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. 

This week on my blog:

March Reading Wrap-Up
All the books I bought/received in March
Review of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

What I read this week:

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Impostor by Susanne Winnacker

Fire & Flood by Victoria Scott

Each of these books were great, I loved them all. They are each the first in trilogies and I now have to wait an eternity for the sequels :-(

Books I bought/received or borrowed this week:

I didn't buy, recieve or borrow any books this week, but I did win a book through Goodreads First Reads on Thursday, so that should turn up before the month is out. I do have 4 books checked out from the library:

Cress by Marissa Meyer
Sever by Lauren Destefano
Bloodlines by Richelle Mead
Into The Still Blue by Veronica Rossi

Next Week on my blog:

I am going to be trying out a few memes starting next week and these will hopefully help me to get more involved in the book blogging community.

Monday - It's Monday! What am I Reading?
Tuesday - Review: Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Wednesday - Waiting On Wednesday: After The End
Thursday - Life of a Blogger: Food
Bookish Thoughts Thursday
Friday - Friday Finds
Saturday - Review: Impostor by Susanne Winnacker
Sunday - The Sunday Post

This week in real life:

This week was the first week of the Easter holidays from university and I used my free time wisely. I caught up on a ton of TV shows I've gotten behind on, watched some movies, read, worked on my blogs and basically lounged around a lot, not doing much at all. Walking Dead Season finale left a lot to be desired, I found it very anti-climactic, but still looking forward to season 5.

Next week in real life:

I have to get started on my final essay for university and I need to make a start on revising for exams I have coming in May. I also really need to start packing, I may not have found a new house yet but I don't want to leave packing to last minute because it's stressful. Otherwise I should still be able to get lots of reading and writing in. Oh! and Game of Thrones is back = me super, super excited.

I hope everyone else had a great week and that next week will be equally as great or better.

Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell
Published September 10th 2013 by St. Martin's Griffin

Goodreads Synopsis: A coming-of-age tale of fanfiction, family, and first love.

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan.... But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she's really good at it. She and her twin, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fanfiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.

Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend; a fiction-writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world; a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words...and she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

My Review: It is going to be very hard for me to not to fangirl ;-) all through this review because I absolutely loved it. I have it on my Kindle but believe me, I will be buying a physical copy so I can re-read it in all its tactile glory.

Fangirl tells the story of Cath as she starts university and all the troubles that that entails for the incredibly shy introvert that Cath is. Making this big scary step even scarier is the fact that her twin sister Wren wants to go her own way in university – to not room with Cath and develop her own circle of friends separate from Cath. Cath’s only escape from the real world is her love of Simon Snow (think Harry Potter) and the fanfiction she writes about his world. On top of this, she has to deal with a gruff never there roommate and her always there boyfriend, a cute classmate who is only interested in her for one thing but it’s not what you think and a writing professor who wants her to expand her writing outside of fanfiction. Plus, a dad who is not coping so well now he’s on his own and absent mother who wants back in her life. Phew!

I loved Cath from the get-go, she is a girl after my own fangirl heart, we may obsess over different things – I don’t write or read fanfiction but I understand why people do – but both our obsessions make the real world a bit more bearable. She is so realistically drawn (as are all the characters) that as a fellow introvert, it is easy to connect with her. I adored Levi (the roommate’s always there boyfriend) and I want one for myself, he is just simply, well, adorable. It took a little while for me to warm up to Cath’s twin Wren and her roommate Reagan, but once I did, I loved them too.

I really liked how important relationships were in this book - parent/child, siblings, friends and lovers. Her relationship with her dad is so cute; I wish the relationship with my dad was like that. As much as Cath could happily shut herself off from the real world and only having contact with her dad and sister, she learns that she needs other people – real life people.

The character growth for Cath was realistic – she didn’t suddenly become an extrovert but she did slowly come out of her shell, although not all the way, which again is realistic. Speaking of slow developing, the romance was also on slow boil and was super sweet.

I also really liked that every chapter ended with either an excerpt from a Simon Snow novel or from Cath’s own fanfiction. It was like a story within a story, a story that I wish was real because I really like Baz – Simon Snow’s nemesis, roommate and maybe lover.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves contemporaries, coming of age stories, romances and books with socially awkward characters. If you read and loved Eleanor and Park by Rowell, you will love this too.

Thank you Rainbow Rowell, for your wonderful books and your real and relatable characters.

FIVE STARS

What I Bought: March 2014 Book Haul

I only straight up paid for two books last month and they are Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi and Serenity Leaves on the Wind #2 comic.
I won The Serpent of Venice from a Goodreads Firstreads giveaway and I will be reading it soon so I can post a review before its release date.
The rest of the books I bought with the credit I got from trading in some textbooks through Amazon.
So I spent less than £10 on books in March, which is fantastic for my bank account ;-)

Oh! I almost forgot, I also bought Red Glove by Holly Black and This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel, both brand new and only £1 each.

What I Read: March Wrap-Up

As March was the last month of my first year at university, it was very busy indeed. Therefore I did not get in as much reading as I would have liked. I read 5 books for school and only one for myself and that one I only managed to find time for was by reading it on the bus to uni.


News from Nowhere and The Time Machine were both for my Victorian Lit module, as we were discussing utopias and dystopias. I liked The Time Machine much more than News From Nowhere, as it was not only more scifi-ish but a lot more happens.

I found Invisible Cities beautifully written but incredibly boring. I read it for my Creative Writing module, to help give an idea in how to write in a postmodern way. Did it help? Not really.

I read The Things They Carried for American Lit and I loved it, it is the best thing I have read for the whole module. I even wrote an essay on it and I still love it, thats says a lot because usually writing an essay on something makes me hate it (or at least like it less).

Small Island just may be the most mainstream book I read for university this year. I read it for my Post-War and Contemporary Lit class while we were looking at postcolonialism. I love the book and really enjoyed studying postcolonialism - so much that I am doing a whole module on it next year.

The one book I read that is not for school is Half Bad by Sally Green and I really enjoyed this and already posted a review.









Even though I have finished all my classes, I still have one more essay to write and two exams to revise for, plus I am moving house and will be looking for a job. Therefore, I won't have loads of free time but just enough to get in a lot more reading than I have had since I started university. So hopefully there will be quite a few more posts going up. Happy April everyone.

Review: Half Bad by Sally Green

Half Bad (#1 Half-Life) by Sally Green
Published March 3rd 2014 by Penguin 

Goodreads Synopsis: Half Bad by Sally Green is a breathtaking debut novel about one boy's struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches.

You can't read, can't write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.

You get sick if you stay indoors after dark.

You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.

You've been kept in a cage since you were fourteen.

All you've got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys. And do that before your seventeenth birthday.

                                                       Easy.

My Review: I bought this book because it has been super hyped on BookTube and also, I love the cover. Is it worth the hype, um? Tough one. It is a good book, I really did enjoy it, and I read it in just a couple of sittings and was thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it. So maybe, read it and decide for yourself.

Half-Bad tells the story of Nathan, a half-code witch – his mother is a white witch and his father a black witch. This does not bode well for him, as the council of white witches pretty much hate anything to do with black witches. White witches are supposed to be the good guys and black witches are the bad guys, but it doesn’t take too long to find out that this distinction is not so black and white (like what I did there?).

My least favourite thing about the book is the ending; it is anti-climactic and doesn’t feel like the end at all. I know it is the first in a trilogy but there is just no closure, not even a cliff-hanger. I guess this lack of closure will ensure that I will pick up and devour the second book (Half-Wild) as soon as it is released. Something that other readers seem to have a problem with in this book, is the couple of places where it is written in 2^nd person and how slow it is to get going but neither of these bother me. I found the 2^nd person POV interesting and the slow and steady start allowed me to really get to know Nathan and his world.

I loved Nathan as a character, he isn’t some whiny little brat who just complains about what’s happening to him, well, he does a little bit but that is highly understandable. I really connected with him and I felt so bad for everything that was happening to him; I wanted to swoop in and rescue the poor fella. I think he reacted to his ill treatment in a more realistic manner than some protagonists in other books, where they just take everything in their stride.

A couple of thing that separate this book from a slew of other YA novels, aside from the male protagonist,  is that there is no insta-love or a love triangle. The romance is slowly developed, naturally and they are friends for a long time before they become a couple. It makes a nice change to read about two people coming together in a realistic manner.

Overall, I real enjoyed this book and I look forward to continue Nathan’s story. I hope he gets a happy ending – he deserves it.

What I Read: February Wrap-Up

I have been busy this month, so I haven't written any many post or any reviews, sorry. February was a better reading month than January, as far as the number of books I read goes. February was also quite an eclectic month - there was romance, fantasy, satire, plays and poetry. The majority of the books I read this month were for university and luckily I enjoyed all of them, which is a first, as I usually struggle through required reading. For my own reading this month I read three novels and one non-fiction, that alone is better than last month.

So, for university I read:

                           

Macbeth is the first Shakespeare I have read since school and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I did read it while I was watching a production of it online, in order to help me understand it better, which it did.

I might be cheating a bit by including Swift's A Modest Proposal, but oh well, I am counting it anyway.

Sexing the Cherry is weird but wonderful and Being There is strange but sweet.





The novels that I read just for me:
I loved each of these novels and I will have reviews for Steelheart and Fangirl soon. I may do a series review for The Vampire Academy series in the future, if anyone would be interested. I will say though, that I absolutely loved this series and I am sad I have finished it because I miss the characters already. I am looking forward to reading the Bloodlines series and I hope all of the characters I love make an appearence.

The non-fiction book I read this month is Mini Habits by Stephen Guise.

I read this because I have tried and failed many times to start new positive habits such as working-out and writing more. What drew me to this book was reading a blog post by the author where he talked about the basic premise of this book - start small. If you want to include exercise into your life, start with one push-up a day. You want to write everyday, aim for 50 words a day. Intrigued, I purchased the book on my kindle and devoured it in one sitting.

 After reading this book I chose three mini habits - one push-up and one squat a day and to write 50 words a day. Now, you may be thinking "what is the point? you're not gonna get any stronger or get much writing done with those tiny goals". Which is what I thought at first, but the beauty of it is that, 9 times out of 10, I am going to do more than one push-up and I am going to write more that 50 words. The goals are so ridiculously small that I would be an idiot to not even attempt them and if I only manage one squat, one push-up and 50 words, I have still achieved my goal. I have a win and I am more likely to stick to the habits. Whereas, if I was to aim for 20 squats and push-ups and 500 words a day, and only managed 12 squats, 3 push-ups and 200 words, I would feel like a failure. Add consective days of not reacing my goals, I woud become disheartened and give up altogether.

I love the idea of aiming for small victories but achieving bigger ones, because a little bit is better than none at all.

Well, that was my reading for the month of February. Hopefully, I can do just as well or even better in March, although I think my posts will continue to be few and far between. Wishing everyone a happy March.

What I Bought: February 2014 Book Haul

I did so much better this month in not buying way too many books. I think I may have spent a total of £10 on books this month, which is good as I am a poor student. I got three books from the discount book shop The Works and the rest from charity shops. I feel very proud of myself for my self-control in not buying a million and one books like I usually do.

The books from Moll Flanders down are all on my year two university reading list and were all from charity shops. *pats self on back*

The Girl in the Steel Corset was a random buy as I haven't read any Steampunk yet and I look forward to delving into that genre. And for £1.99 if I don't like it, I am not losing out on much.

Hyperion and Consider Phlebas are two books that I have been wanting to read for a while now. So, seeing them for less that £2 each, I got very excited and had to have them.

Hopefully next month will be just as gentle on my bank account. *fingers crossed*

What I Borrowed: Library Haul #2

Confession: I only read one of the books I checked out from the library last month and that was Steelheart. A bad habit I have, is to check out a whole bunch of books but then only read one or two. I don't like to renew books over and over, just incase someone is waiting for them but doesn't want to put them on reserve (because that costs money). So, if I havent't read them after one renewal I take them back - very thoughful of me I know.

Anyway on to the haul. I currently only have 5 books checked out and I WILL read all of them.

Cress by Marrisa Meyer is book three in the Lunar Chronicles, which is a very loose, but very cool fairytale re-telling. The first book in the series, Cinder introduces us to the cool new world that has cyborgs, spaceships and an inhabited Moon. We also meet Cinder, who is as you might guess - Cinderella, but don't expect talking mice or fairy Godmothers. In the second book Scarlet, we meet a new main character, Scarlet who is Little Red Riding Hood, whose life becomes embroiled with Cinders. Cress brings us yet another new character, this time it is Rapunzel and I expect she will somehow cross paths with Cinder and Scarlet. I very much enjoyed the first two books and I am certain I enjoy will this one too.

Into The Still Blue by Veronica Rossi is the final book in the Under The Never Sky trilogy. The series follows a girl called Aria who grew up in a world where the Earth's atmosphere is almost deadly so people live inside self-contained pods and they spend the majority of their time within virtual worlds. Aria has been told that the people who live outside these pods are akin to savages. After an altercation with the son of a powerful man Aria is exiled to the outside world where she meets Perry, an outsider, who is not at all what she would have expected. The novels are also told from Perry's perspective in alternating chapters, but I will let you find out for yourself about him.

Bloodlines by Richelle Mead is a spin-off series from the Vampire Academy series. I don't know much about this series, just that it is told from Sydney the alchemist's point of view and that Adrain Ivashkov makes an appearence or two. I love the Vampire Academy series so I am super excited to get started on this.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown is a book that I didn't know all that much about going in, except that it is set on Mars and has been said to be like The Hunger Games meets Ender's Game meets The Game of Thrones (sensing a theme here). I have started reading it and so far I don't see any resemblence to either of those novels but I am really liking it. There will be a review. To go all shallow on you for a minute - HOT AUTHOR ALERT - seriously, look him up. I find attractive male authors are so far and few between that I need to appreciate them when they appear. Also, he likes Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon, two of my favourite people - I think I'm in love. We now return you back to your scheduled programming...

To contradict what I just said in my confession - I still have Watchmen from last month's haul. The reason being is that I am actually still reading it and have been for what feels like forever now. Not because it isn't good or I am not enjoying it, because it is and I am, I just simply haven't finished it yet for whatever reason. I am also currently reading Red Rising by Pierce Brown and I am really enjoying it so far.

My cat is enjoying Watchmen too.

What I Read: January Wrap-up

I didn't have the best reading month this month, I only read 2 books. Granted one of those books was 1000 plus pages, but it was a graphic novel, so an easy read.

The first book I read this year was The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. The protaganist of this story, Tana, lives in a world where vampires are real, and dangerous. Vampires are contained in walled-off cities called Coldtowns and there are livefeeds that broadcast the going-ons of these cities to the rest of the world.
Waking up one morning after a party, Tana has a horrific encounter with some vampires but manages to get away, along with her ex-boyfriend, who has been bitten (and you know what that means) and a sexy, mysterious stranger. Together they head towards the nearest Coldtown, as they are the safest places for the infected.
The story consists of a range of interesting and likable characters, even the bad guys. The vampires here are not sparkly vegetarians, they are dangerous killers who love to feed on the living. They are of course, still alluring and sexy, especially Gavriel.
I really enjoyed this book and I hope it is the first in a series, as I would like to continue to follow Tana and Gavriel's stories.

The second and last book I read was The Walking Dead Compendium: Volume One by Robert Kirkman & Co.
I did a review on this book, which you can find Here.

I hope that February will be a better reading month, but we'll see. I have nine books checked out from the library at the moment and I would like to get a majority of them read this month. Darn university, getting in the way of my reading ;-)