Moose Monday #5

Happy Monday, everyone!

Do you guys ever get into reading ruts?  I hate them!  I flew through nearly half of The Book Thief, but then I just wasn't interested anymore.  Don't get me wrong, I like the book so far.  I LOVE it, actually.  But I just don't feel like reading it right now.  HELP ME!  What do you guys do to get interested in a book again?

What I've been doing is reading other things.  I've read some fanfiction (don't judge) and last night I started reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  It's so freaky, but I am absolutely hooked!  I'm only about ten pages in, so I can't comment that much on it, but I'm loving it so far!

Hopefully by this time next week, I'll be able to say that I've finally finished The Book Thief!

Magical Quotes #4 | The Book Thief

"“Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.” 

                                                                                                -Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Top Ten Tuesday #4 | Book Pet Peeves

1. Cracking the spine.
2. Making it look not read.  Do you know what I mean?  The best kind of books are the ones that look loved: dog-eared, written in, things are highlighted and annotated.  I don't like seeing books on people's bookshelves that don't look loved.  Every book deserves to be loved!  Book equality!
3. Bashing a book you haven't read.
4. Arguing with someone about a book that's left up to interpretation in a condescending way (That one tends to come up in class a lot.  Just stop).
5. When someone "borrows" a book from you and you never see it again.  You know who you are.
6. Complaining about reading a good book just because it's for school.
7. Not putting books back on the shelf in libraries.  I mean come on, the shelves are right there.
8. Putting other books down in front of people who love those books.  Just don't.  Even if it's Twilight.  Okay...you might get a free pass if it's Twilight.
9. Letting a book gather dust on your shelf.
10. Ripping the pages of a book.

What are you worst book pet peeves?

Moose Monday #4

Happy Monday, everyone!

So I decided to interrupt my "to read" book stack and pick up The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  Even though I had heard so many amazing things about this book, I had shied away from reading it.  When I was in middle school and high school, WWII books were crammed down my throat until the point where I developed a huge aversion to any books having anything to do with that time period.  

But now that the movie is out, I thought it was past time that I read it.  And holy crap, I am so happy that I did.  The perspective is so original, and the writing style is amazing!  I can't recommend this book enough.  Read it.  Read it now!  Read it right this second!  Leave and go buy it at the book store.

As of right now, I'm about halfway through.  And I can't wait to finish it and then go see the movie!

Oh, by the way, I did finish The White Queen, and you can (maybe) expect a full review coming sometime soon!  It was amazing!

Favorite Opening Lines #1 | Peter Pan

"All children, except one, grow up."

                                          Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

Magical Quotes #3 | Harry Potter

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

                                           -Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K Rowling

To Read in November!

Hey guys!! I thought I'd share with you what books I hope to read this month!  Most likely I won't even get through half of these, but hey...a girl can dream.  I actually will have a lot of free time the first two weeks of November, so maybe I'll use those free hours to read!  Okay, here we go!

I'm going to go through these in order, starting with The White Queen.  This bookstack is on my bedside table, so I get excited to read these books because I see them all the time.  I also put them in the order in which I want to read them, but because Clash of Kings is so tiny, I had to put it on the top so that the entire stack (and an iHome) wouldn't topple!  

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory is the only book in this stack that I've actually started.  I'm loving it so far, and I'll keep you updated!  This is the first book of The Cousin's War series, which is set around the time period of the War of the Roses.  It centers around Elizabeth, an ambitious woman who secretly marries King Edward. 

Next, I wanted to throw a classic into the mix, and I thought it was high time to read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the passionate story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff.  It'll be my first Bronte! 

Sorry that this next one got cut off in the picture!  I've heard so many great things about Room by Emma Donoghue.  I got this hardback for $5 at Barnes and Noble!! Told from the five-year-old Jack's perspective, this book is about a room.  To Jack, it's a home - all he's ever known.  To his mother, it's a prison.  She decides to escape with her son, but are they ready for what the outside world has to offer?

Don't get mad at me guys!  I haven't read Divergent yet.  Veronica Roth takes us to a dystopian world in Chicago, where people are divided into factions.  These five factions work to cultivate a specific virtue.  And when you turn sixteen, you choose which faction you will devote your life to.  This follows Beatrice, her choice, and all that comes after.

Lastly, I'm excited to get into Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. This follows Jacob, a boy who's sent to the ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  After he finds some disturbing old photographs and realizes that some of these children may still be alive.

Oh!  I almost forgot to mention Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin.  This is the second installment in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.  I need to catch up with this series, because I want to read along with the show!  With the king dead and Eddard gone, everyone is vying for the throne.

Well, that's it, guys!  I really hope that I'll read all of this in this upcoming month.  I promise I'll keep you updated :)

Top Ten Tuesday #3 | Books I'll Read to My Kids

10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

9. The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn

8. Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

7. Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss

6. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

5. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle

4. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

3. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

2. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak 

1. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg (I still read this book every year myself at Christmastime!)

Let me know what your favorites kid's books are!!

Moose Monday #3

I haven't done a lot of reading this past week (wah!), so I don't have much to report here EXCEPT that I began The White Queen by Philippa Gregory.  I've been absolutely devouring it, and I'm about halfway through.  It's so good!  It moves really quickly, which is one of Gregory's trademarks, and I love her for it.  I saw the show, and was addicted to it, and now I'm equally addicted to the book!

Hopefully I have some more exciting news next week!  Bye guys!

Magical Quotes #2

"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery." - Joseph Conrad

Literary Characters I Want to Dress Up As for Halloween!

What a wordy title...goodness.

• I don't know why, but I want to dress up as Gandalf the Grey.  Maybe just so I can go up to people and yell "You shall not pass!"  (I do that anyways, but at least my outfit would give it some context)
• To continue with Tolkien, I'd love to dress up as Arwen, too.  I just want to be an elf!
• Luna Lovegood
• Effie Trinket.  That costume would be so much fun!

Top Ten Tuesday #2: Reasons Why I Love to Read

Let's get sappy!

10. You get to meet people and bond with people over favorite books and authors.  It's something you have in common, and you can't really be fake about liking books.  You know what I mean?  If you bond with someone over a book, you know it's for real!
9. You can take a book with you anywhere.  You can sit down (or just lean against a wall) for a couple of minutes and just calm down with a good book.
8.  It's so relaxing (well...unless you're reading some sort of murder mystery - that could be kind of stressful).
7. It makes you feel smart (is that just me who feels this way?).
6.  You learn so much about so many different things.
5. You get to live vicariously through characters.
4. You get taken to worlds you could never go to otherwise.
3. You learn that you're not the only one who thinks certain ways or acts certain ways.
2. You get taken out of your own head for a long while.
1. You get lost, and you get found.

Moose Monday #2

Happy Monday, everyone!

This Moose Monday will be a lot shorter than last week's, I promise.  So, last time I mentioned that I began reading Loki by Mike Vasich, but I decided to put it down.  Well, I picked it back up again and finished it within a couple of days.  The reason I put it down was because I had read similar stories before, and it got boring.  But then I got to a point where I hadn't read similar stories, and I got hooked somewhere halfway through.  Because I mentioned a lot about the book last week, I won't go into much detail again!

With that finished, I picked up A Lion Among Men by Gregory McGuire, which I mentioned last week, too.  I was so confused for the first hundred pages, mainly because I read the first two books in the Wicked series about two or three years ago.  I was lost.  Because I'm at school, I don't have Wicked and Son of a Witch with me, so I'm going to read them over the summer or Christmas break and then pick this book up again.

I haven't decided what I'm going to read next, but I think it's going to be The White Queen by Phillipa Gregory.  I watched the show on BBC and absolutely loved it!

Well, until tomorrow, see you later!

Author Factoids #1: Ellen Hopkins

• Born in Long Beach, CA
• Adopted, but found her birthmother, who wrote poetry her entire life
• Knew she wanted to be a writer at age 9, when her first poem was published 
• Has 3 biological children and one adopted one (whose background inspired Crank)
• Grew up living next to movie stars!
• Was in a physically abusive relationship for three years
• Wrote children's books before moving into the YA genre
• Gives amazing tips on writing and publishing for all the aspiring authors out there!

What I find absolutely amazing: She writes about teenagers, but was born in 1955.  YET she truly understands and still can write from their point of view flawlessly.

Check out her website!

Magical Quotes #1

The road goes ever on and on / Down from the door where it began. / Now far ahead the Road has gone, / And I must follow, if I can, / Pursuing it with eager feet, / Until it joins some larger way / Where many paths and errands meet. / And whither then? I cannot say.

The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R Tolkien

Top Ten Tuesday #1: Books for Halloween

Hello and welcome to my Top Ten Tuesday series!  With Halloween quickly approaching, I thought I'd do my favorite books to get you in the mood.

10. The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe: creepy, eccentric short stories.  Read a few, read 'em all!
9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling: okay, I know this isn't a scary book, but what's the most common Halloween costume for a girl?  A witch.  What's the most popular book involving witches?  The Harry Potter books.  Bing, bang, boom, connection made.
8. Marked by P.C. and Kristen Cast: the first book of one of my favorite vampire series, the House of Night series.  You'll be addicted within the first five pages!
7. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: short and weird.  Psychologically frustrating and just plain confusing.  But that's the fun of it!
6. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: come on, you HAVE to read this before Halloween, especially with the new show Sleepy Hollow on the air!  It's short and classic.  Great to read right before you watch the movie with Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane.
5. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz: I used to read these books in middle school and I was always, always, always freaked out.  I'll probably still be freaked out if I read them again.  Truly scary and just plain creepy.
4. Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Double, double, toil, and trouble.  Need I say more?
3. The Shining by Stephen King: a creepy psychological tease
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: one of my favorite books that I was required to read for school.  It turned around so many of my preconceived thoughts about the monster.  Creepy, but also full of social commentary on science going too far.
1. Dracula by Bram Stoker: the ultimate classic to read during the Halloween season.  This is one of my favorite books of all time.  If you're tired of reading vampire books, I encourage you to try this last one.  It is as far from Twilight as you could possibly get.  Then go watch the movie: absolutely amazing!  If you're going to read one book in October, this should be it.

So in conclusion, read Dracula, read Dracula, read Dracula.  Read it.  Do it now.  You don't even have to buy it.  If you have any kind of tablet, you can get it for free, because it's a classic.  Yay for free things!

Moose Monday #1

        Hey guys!  I'm starting a new series called Moose Monday.  On Moose Mondays, I'll update you on what I'm reading and how it's going!  I thought it would be perfect to start this series on this particular week, because last week was the week of reading, reading, reading!  So, without further ado...
       Last week, I started to read Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  I never saw the movie (because I have a thing about reading a book before I see the movie), but both the book and the movie are so popular that I decided that it was long overdue for me to read it.  Now, prepare yourselves.  After 50 pages, I decided to save it for another time.  It just didn't grip me like I thought it would.  Maybe in a year I'll pick it up again, read the entire thing, and go back in time to beat up my younger self for putting this book down.  Who knows?  But I can tell you...that book is sitting in a box underneath my bed now.
      But then I hit the jackpot.  A few years ago, I read Burned by Ellen Hopkins.  My family will back me up on this: when I finished it, I literally threw the book out the window and onto our lawn.  The ending just made me so ANGRY.  But that's part of what made me love the book so much.  Besides Ellen's book Identical, I can say Burned is my favorite of all her books.  When I saw that she had (quite unexpectedly) released a sequel, I had to have it.  I read it in a night, having no idea where she would take us.  This gave us insight not only into Pattyn, but also her sister Jackie, who is going through her own problems (to say the least).  I don't want to spoil anything, but I will tell you that I cried at the end.  Now, was it happy crying or sad crying?  You'll have to read it to find out!  Or maybe just wait for my full-blown review?  But I highly, highly recommend this book if you like Burned, as well as just Ellen Hopkins in general.  Hmmmmm...I may do an author bio or something about her, because I think her story is really interesting.  Note to self!
      Then, in celebration of Thor 2 coming out next month, I decided to read the Loki book that has been sitting on my shelves for the past four months.  Even before Thor came out, I've been into Norse mythology, but I haven't read a book strictly about Loki.  Because his character interested me so much, I looked further into The Sly One and bought the book simply entitled Loki by Mike Vasich.  I really love the way that it's written.  Most mythological books are written from a very informational point of view, but Vasich writes in a semi-fictional way, adding dialogue and internal thoughts.  That said, I recently read a Norse mythology book, which had a lot of Loki myths in it, so after I read the first 60 pages of this book, I felt like I was reading that old Norse mythology book again.  I knew what was going to happen all the time, which got me bored easily.  I think I'll pick it up and read it again once it's closer to the release of Thor 2.
      And now, for what I'm reading currently: A Lion Among Men by Gregory McGuire.  I can say that Wicked is one of my favorite books, but I never read this last book of the series (the second being Son of a Witch).  As you can imagine, it's all about the Cowardly Lion.  I only read the introduction and the first few pages, but I know that I'm going to like it.
     Alright folks.  This will probably be the longest Moose Monday post that I'll ever write, because there probably won't be another week where I go through 4 books!  Stay tuned for my next post tomorrow!

     

Ellen Hopkins' Smoke: A Review

Spoilers for both Burned and Smoke. You've been warned.

Burned is one of my favorite books by Ellen Hopkins, coming in second only to Identical.  I read through Burned so quickly, and I thought the conclusion was good.  We got closure.  That's why I was so surprised to hear that Hopkins was coming out with a sequel!  I know that some people weren't too happy with this, saying that Pattyn's story couldn't get any worse, and that they expect this entire sequel to be about her complaining about her problems.  Well, if they really knew Pattyn, they knew she would do nothing of the sort.  Yes, she was grieving over the loss of her love and unborn child, but this was all about her journey of moving on.

Not only did we hear from Pattyn, but we got to read in Jackie's point of view as well.  Because I was so focused on Pattyn in Burned, I didn't realize how instrumental Jackie was to her story until I read this book.  Jackie is the only person who knew what really happened the night her father died, and it's only returning to her memory in drips and drabs.

My favorite two parts of the book involved both sisters.  I loved the relationship between Pattyn and Shoshone, and I couldn't have been prouder when Jackie finally stood up in church and told the truth out loud for the very first time.

The one thing I got so angry with, though, was the mother Janice.  I wish I could jump through those pages and set her straight.  I think she just wanted to be numb and unfeeling, but watching Jackie struggle so badly while her mother stood idly by just killed me.

Although I think that the relationship with Angel was a bit forced and rushed, I'm happy with the ending.  The letters to Ethan were slightly reminiscent of PS I Love You, except the living was writing to the dead, instead of the other way around.

If you want to get the full experience of this book, I recommend reading Burned again.  I read it so long ago, that I honestly forgot about 90% of the things that happened.  All I remembered was that Ethan had died.  I didn't even remember that Pattyn was pregnant!  That's quite a thing to forget...but anyways, I give this 4.5 out of 5 stars.  I was riveted the entire time, and I'm so excited to get into another Ellen Hopkins book.  I have Fallout waiting on my bookshelves.  It's calling my name!