Jump Into Books

Inspired by a post on the MacTeenBooks blog, I wanted to spotlight some of the books that I'm thankful for this year (this includes old and new favorites)!  The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani and The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (Pictured:Scarlet, Book 2). Both have become my favorite things of the year. I've been completely pulled in by both, and they have amazing (and unique) perspectives on fairy tales.    Slimed by Mathew Klickstein brought up all my 90's kid nostalgia, and because of it I revisited a lot of old memories and shared stories with the friends I've had since grade school. Plus, the author just seems cool in general.   The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (Pictured: The House of Hades, Book 4) & Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling (Pictured: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). Two great series. Harry Potter was something that brought my entire family together, as we each read them and discussed theories. Amazingly, R...

My name is Amanda and I'm guest reviewing on Cornucopia of Reviews. I am a junior in college and, like my sister, I really enjoy reading. Typical genres that interest me are adventure, comedy and horror. My sister has attempted to get me to read many books that she enjoys. However, I rarely finish them or even read them. But when my sister purchased Cinder by Marissa Meyer I had the opposite experience.  In order for me to finish reading a book, it needs to draw me in fairly quickly. This book drew me in within the first chapter. In the beginning the reading learns about cinder, a cyborg mechanic, a handsome prince and, a mysterious plague. Normally, I don't pick up books that include romance because I find that romantic novels can portray romance in an unrealistic manner. Cinder was different because the prince, Kai, didn't know that Cinder was a cyborg and he saw them as lesser than humans. The romance in the story was not typical romance because it wasn...

This is my sister, holding the copy of Cinder, by Marissa Meyer, that I bought for her. Yes, I literally bought her a copy, since I'm pretty sure that I've loaned out my copy...and I can't remember which friend has it. We have fairly different tastes in books. She's totally prepared for the creepy, scary, and the attention-grabbing. I can only handle that in small doses before I have to sleep with the light on and a Disney movie playing on a TV. It's not pretty. There are some books that we do have in common. Harry Potter , Howl's Moving Castle , The Hunger Games ...these are all books with strong characters and adventure. That's why I thought that she would like Cinder . It's got kick-ass female characters (good and evil), and a romance that doesn't overpower the story. My sister is also someone that needs to be grabbed within the first 25 pages to really get through and enjoy a book. I knew that this one was perfect for that. When I read it, I cou...

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga at  Tynga's Reviews ! It's a way to highlight the books that everyone got throughout the week. It's been a quiet month, mostly because I've been doing well not buying books on a whim! Hurrah, I'm actually following through with a book-buying ban.  For Review:   Going Rogue (Also Known As 2) by Robin Benway Being permanently based in a local New York City high school as an undercover operative has its moments, good and bad, for 16-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver. Pros: More quality time with her former mark-turned-boyfriend Jesse Oliver and insanely cool best friend, Roux. Getting to spend quality time with her semi-retired and international spy honorary uncle, Angelo. Cons: High school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. But when Maggie's parents are falsely accused of stealing priceless gold coins, Maggie uses her safecracking skills to try and clear t...

*Need I say that this will probably/definitely contain spoilers for the first film and possibly parts of the second one so if you haven't read the book/have but want to have the film unspoiled before you see it, stop here!* Hello! I am talking about films today again. Namely Catching Fire because it was amazing and I loved it and I want to tell you about it. Is that not a good enough reason?  I wasn't too sure if I was going to like Catching Fire as much as The Hunger Games as I don't remember liking the book as much and I knew that the tone would be different and I wasn't sure if it was going to maintain that same sort of emotional connection that we had in the first film because it's not as much about the games as it is about the burgeoning revolution. Well, I was wrong. It was, in my opinion, better than the first one, and it captured the spirit of the books beautifully. Katniss is probably one of my favourite characters not just in the series, but ever. I think ...

The first kidnappings happened two hundred years before. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth and spirited away. This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone...

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown Holly Black September 3rd 2013 Indigo Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave. One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown  is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black. I've always been sort of ambivalent towards vampires. I think that they...

Waiting on Wednesday was started by Jill at  Breaking the Spine . This weekly meme shares the upcoming books that I'm most excited about.  To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister's ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all. Published by Simon & Schuster  Release Date: April 22, 2014

Letterbox Love is the UK's version of IMM, hosted by the lovely Lynsey at  Narratively Speaking  :) Bought: Captain Marvel volume 1: In Pursuit of Flight by Kelly Sue DeConnick Wonder Woman volumer 2: Guts by Brian Azzarello (I have been reading some comics lately! They are actually pretty good and I've been planning on doing some mini-reviews or something for the ones I've read lately maybe.) Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones by Derek Landy (Right, so, on the recommendation of Cait , I started reading these books, and the first one was really good but I'm so annoying because the 3rd one has arrived before the 2nd and I just want to carry on reading them but I can't and boo.)  So yeah, comics and middle-grade books about talking skeletons. Who really needs anything else in their letterbox?  What did you get this week?

Welcome to the Gratitude Giveaways Hop hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer ! Enter the contest on the rafflecopter below, but please make sure to read the rules before entering! a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is Not a Test Courtney Summers June 19th 2012 St Martin's Griffin It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago,  her  world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually  want  to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life— and  death—inside. When everything is gone, what do  you  hold...

Waiting on Wednesday was started by Jill at  Breaking the Spine . This weekly meme shares the upcoming books that I'm most excited about.  Going Rogue (Also Known As #2) by Robin Benway Being permanently based in a local New York City high school as an undercover operative has its moments, good and bad, for 16-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver. Pros: More quality time with her former mark-turned-boyfriend Jesse Oliver and insanely cool best friend, Roux. Getting to spend quality time with her semi-retired and international spy honorary uncle, Angelo. Cons: High school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. But when Maggie's parents are falsely accused of stealing priceless gold coins, Maggie uses her safecracking skills to try and clear their names. Too bad it only serves to put her and everyone she loves in danger. Maggie and her "new team" flee to Paris where they must come up with a plan to defeat their f...

What is teaser tuesday? It's a meme hosted by  Should Be Reading  and here are the rules:  • 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!  "He's always giving good advice, too, especially about safecracking and lock picking. It's like if Tim Gunn and James Bond had a baby, and that baby was Yoda." -Also Known As, Page 4, by Robin Benway

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel Ransom Riggs (story), Cassandra Jean (art) October 29th 2013 Headline Ransom Riggs's haunting fantasy bestseller adapted to a graphic novel!  As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. I have yet to read the actual novel novel of Miss Peregrine, so I'm just going to give a heads up about that and this is my first experience with the story and all that, so I can't really judge the graphic novel on how it matches up with the book itself, but I will say that it...

Letterbox Love is the UK's version of IMM, hosted by the lovely Lynsey at  Narratively Speaking  :) Review: Dead Ends by Erin Lange (This book looks really great and I've heard awesome things about her other book, Butter, so I'm really excited about this! Thank you Faber!) Bought: Spy Society by Robin Benway The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June by Robin Benway (after reading and loving Audrey, Wait! about 4 months ago, I finally decided to splurge and get the rest of Robin Benway's books. A little bit because everything I've read has been so dark lately...) Black Heart by Holly Black Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan (I went to Holly and Sarah's event at Foyles this Monday and it was a lot of fun! Loads of other book bloggers were there and it was so awesome to see them again, plus I got to meet Holly Black for the first time ever and embarrass myself in front of her and everything. It was great. And I'm not even being sarcastic. I love her books.) So...

If Ruby Wright could have her way, her dad would never have met and married her stepmother Willow, her best friend George would be more than a friend, and her mom would still be alive. Ruby knows wishes can't come true; some things just can't be undone. Then she discovers a tree in the middle of an Ohio cornfield with a wormhole to nine alternative realities. Suddenly, Ruby can access completely different realities, each containing variations of her life—if things had gone differently at key moments. The windshield wiper missing her mother’s throat…her big brother surviving his ill-fated birth…her father never having met Willow. Her ideal world—one with everything and everyone she wants most—could be within reach. But is there such a thing as a perfect world? What is Ruby willing to give up to find out? Best Bits: This book reminded me of the film Sliding Doors . It's based around the concept that even small differences in what happens to us can have a great imp...

Waiting on Wednesday was started by Jill at  Breaking the Spine . This weekly meme shares the upcoming books that I'm most excited about.  Liar of Dreams (The Diviners 2) by Libba Bray After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to "read" objects, and therefore, read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, "America's Sweetheart Seer." But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners' abilities... Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dreamworld and catch a killer? Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Release Date: August 15, 2014 I'm not a fan of the cover, but I can't wait to read this one!

What is teaser tuesday? It's a meme hosted by  Should Be Reading  and here are the rules: Grab your current read... Open to a random page Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on the page Don't include spoilers. "I was just as horrified. The last thing I wanted was to dissolve into thin air in front of the entire class." -Ruby Red, Page 87, Kerstin Gier

So, things have kind of been a bit slow on the blog lately, haven't they? I wish I could blame college but I think I'm just having a bit of a blogging slump, so there isn't really much for me to round up but I'm going to do it anyway. It's been too long since I last posted anything... Sorry about that. But anyway! Books read: September Fearsome Dreamer by Laure Eve Raw Blue by Kirsty Eager Geek Girl (reread) by Holly Smale The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater Geek Girl: Model Misfit by Holly Smale This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales October Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell Wonder Woman volume 1 by Brian Azzarello Hawkeye Volume 1 by Matt Fraction Hawkeye volume 2 by Matt Fraction Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel by Ransom Riggs Young Avengers volume 1 by Kieron Gillan Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce Total: 14 Books reviewed: September United We Spy by Ally Carter Briar Rose by Jana Oliver The Dream ...

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga at  Tynga's Reviews ! It's a way to highlight the books that everyone got throughout the week. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black   Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave. One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.  Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani This year,...