WWW Wednesday 7/2/2014

 

 

I completely forgot about Teaser Tuesday yesterday, and I almost forgot about WWW Wednesday! Unfortunately, this is much how July and August are going to go :(. Please forgive!

 

What are you currently reading?

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy

 

What did you just finish reading?

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

After that, I don’t know. Probably mostly ebooks, since we’ll be packing up all my pretties soon. Sad face! It’ll just depend on what comes available on my library hold list next!

 

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Not a Drop to Drink

After my struggle with Laini Taylor, I was hurting for a smooth read. Thankfully, I had three holds come available this weekend all at once! First up was Mindy McGinnis’s debut novel Not a Drop to Drink.

Mindy drops you into a dystopian landscape of alarming potential. There’s almost no context given until the middle of the book, all you really know is that there’s a mother and a daughter living in the middle of nowhere, alone, and they have to fight to survive.

I won’t give away what the dystopia is, but I will say that of the YA I’ve read lately, especially the trilogies, this is the most likely I’ve seen. It is so simple, so realistic. You will sit back and go, oh wow. And then you will run out and start stockpiling.

This book also straddles the line of YA and Adult fiction. The main character is somewhere in her teens, but it never really tells us how old she is. I think she’s somewhere between 16-19. There is kissing, and sex is talked about, but there is no actual sex. The relationship, I felt, was very awkward. I actually didn’t ship the couple in the book, and I wasn’t sure the girl did either…it was very weird. The guy was kind of like, oh, I haven’t seen a female my age ever, so we are automatically going to be together. *shrug*

Awkward rural teenagers aside, this debut was successful for McGinnis. I really liked the characters and the plot. The setting was definitely alarming!

The second book, In a Handful of Dust, is due out in September, and I will for sure be reading it!

Trees of Reverie June Read-A-Thon End

June is ending, so that means the ReadaThon is ending too. Sad Face.

I was able to get through quite a few books on this challenge:

1. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
2. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
3. Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. Divergent by Veronica Roth
6. Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein
7. Aimless Love by Billy Collins
8. Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
9. Brooklyn by Colm Tobin
10. Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

I also started The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy, and listened to a few more chapters of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

By reading these books, I completed quite a few challenges on Trees’ challenge list. I did way better this time than on her last prompt list, so I’m pretty psyched about it.

1. Read a popular or well-known book.
2. Read a book you’ve heard a lot of good things about.
3. Read something recommended to you by a friend.
4. Read a book from your Goodreads to-read shelf.
5. Read a book to go towards a specific reading challenge.
6. Pick out a book from your TBR jar and give it a go.
7. Read a book you’ve been meaning to read.
8. Read a book you’ve been avoiding.
9. Read a book you’ve had lying around unfinished.
10. Read a book by an author you haven’t read before.
11. Finish a book in a series you’ve not yet completed (although I ended up finishing the series by the end of the challenge).
12. Read a Classic.
13. Read a book in the Fantasy genre.
14. Read a book in the Contemporary genre.
15. Read a book from a genre you don’t usually read.
16. Read a book featured in Booktown’s Book Club.
17. Read a poetry book.
18. Read a book written by or focusing on POC #weneeddiversebooks
19. Read a book from thebookishdragon’s Book Lovers List
20. Recommend a book to a friend or a fellow book blogger.
21. Join discussions on the Treesofreverie Read-A-Thom Goodreads Group
22. Share some of your favorite quotes from the books you read
23. Write a book review for one of the books you read.
24. Take pictures of your reading progress.
25. Show off your books by taking more pictures.
26. Start a reading journal (I already had one…so this was a bit of a cheat.)

How did your challenge go?

Dreams of Gods & Monsters

So I finished the Laini Taylor Trilogy. And, thankfully, the last book was better than the second. Unfortunately, it still did not compete at all with the first book. I found myself skimming through this, especially at the end. I thought the ending was fairly disappointing and awkward. It just sort of ends, rather abruptly.

Overall, I liked the legends that were woven into the series. I think Laini definitely did some research into the angels and demons, and the lore associated with those aspects through out history. Especially within the Chimera, there were so many intricate details that made the different clans interesting. And the relationships between the characters were well done, when the story focused on them. However, the battles and war portions were confusing to me, and I just wasn’t that interested in those sections. That’s what I tended to skim over.

I also got really confused about Eliza and Esther. I didn’t really understand the whole Fake Grandma thing. It seemed like a distraction from what was going on back at the war, unnecessary.

Would I read Daughters of Smoke & Bone again? Maybe. The other two? Definitely not. And none of the three will make it onto my shelves.

Angels

This was an obvious choice for me this week, since I am in the middle of reading Laini Taylor’s trilogy. It is all about the war between Chimera and Seraphs.

And check these Seraphs out. I mean come on. These are better than any feathery angels I could have pictured in bible school, that’s for sure! War Angels have some serious power behind them.

(Source:  Unknown)

You can check out my review of Daughter of Smoke & Bone and Days of Blood & Starlight. I just started Dreams of Gods & Monsters, so I’ll have that review up next week sometime.

Days of Blood & Starlight

Oh the dreaded Second Book Fever. I loved Daughter of Smoke & Bone, and I was so looking forward to continuing the trilogy.

But what is it about the middle books in trilogies that are just so awful? The first book lays out the story, draws you in, usually has the basis for the romance if there is one. It has the cliffhanger at the end.

And then the third book has the climax. The action. The big finale.

But the poor second book. It’s usually just so boring. Most of the traveling, the battles, the wheeling and dealing–that all happens here. But it’s nothing really exciting. It’s just day to day, getting from point A to point B.

Unfortunately Days of Blood & Starlight  is no exception to the rule. When it comes to war books, I tend to like the stores surrounding it all. The people involved, their lives, and everything leading up to and after the actual battles themselves. But I just don’t care to read about the nitty gritty battle descriptions. That holds no excitement for me at all. And that’s what this book was built on. This is all about the war between the Chimera and Seraphs. I get it, it’s needed, and crucial to the trilogy…just not really my thing.

I got through it, and I’m hoping the last book, Dreams of Gods & Monsters, wraps it up more interestingly. I so loved Daughter of Smoke & Bone that I would hate to see to see it be a trilogy that should have stopped after the first. We’ll see. I already have G&M from the library, so I’ll be starting that right away. I’ll let you know what I think.

Has anyone else read this series? Did you struggle with the second book too?

WWW Wednesday 6/25/2014

 

What are you currently reading?

Brooklyn by Colm Tobin

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Aimless Love by Billy Collins

 

What did you just finish reading?

Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein

Divergent by Veronica Roth

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy

Teaser Tuesday 6/24/2014

 

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 

“Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once–the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him–but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva knew only this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever.

Karou was alive.”

–Laini Taylor, Days of Blood and Starlight

 

(I know this sounds like a spoiler, but it’s not. You know before this that she is…This is just the moment Akiva finds out.)

 

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

When I think of Paranormal YA, I think of vampires. And when I first tried to read Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone, the first chapter opens as if it is about vampires. So I instantly put it away, because that is just not my thing.

But everyone is talking about this series, about how amaaaaaazing it is. Booktown has it as part of her bookclub. And because of that, it’s listed as part of the Trees of Reverie Readathon challenge. So fine. I’ll give it another shot.

And then, after that first chapter, I realized this book isn’t about vampires AT ALLLLLL. It’s about supernatural powers at war with each other–chimera and seraphs. Taylor has built a totally intense world that you can’t wait to delve into. It’s fantastic. I’ve already put the other two books on hold because I need more of it.

There’s a point in the middle of the book, where everything just STOPS. And I don’t mean it gets boring. I mean, the world around you slows down, and time stops, and the anticipation is so enormous that I felt two things simultaneously:

1. I needed to keep reading IMMEDIATELY

2. I had to take a break and check Tumblr and breathe for a minute because the anticipation was SO intense that I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest.

When an author can make a chapter one sentence on one page, and make you feel like you’re going to have a heart attack and stand up and scream, you know this is a breathtaking book.

WWW Wednesday 6/18/2014

 

What are you currently reading?

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Aimless Love by Billy Collins

 

What did you just finish reading?

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein

Brooklyn by Colm Tobin