WWWednesday [1]

 -- Originally created by MizB

What are you currently reading?

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

This is going to be a very long read, I think I might start another book inbetween to give myself a break from the 800 page slaughter that is this book. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing but it's a little too much for one go. Loving it so far though.

What did you recently finish reading?

Hunger by Michael Grant

This is the second book in the Gone series and didn't disappoint one iota. Amazing book, just as good as the second and didn't fall into the disappointing second book category one bit - there was a chance it could have been boring and samey but it most definitely wasn't. It progressed the storyline wonderfully and the character development was great. 

What do you think you'll read next

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

This has been on my to be read pile for so long that I think it deserves a grand entrance, I'm looking forward to reading this book as it looks interesting.

Top Ten Tuesday | Most Anticipated 2013

Top Ten Most Anticipated Books of 2013

 -- Originally created by The Broke and Bookish

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

This is the third in the Infernal devices series, I am actually yet to read the second one but I will have finished that by the time that the third one is released. Even though I've only read the first one I am absolutely in love with this series and love Cassandra Clares character work with a passion - the way she creates believable witty characters that I actually laugh along with is amazing and I'm highly excited for this one to come out.

Divergent #3 by Veronica Roth

I wasn't too keen on Insurgent as I thought that the character of Tris got unbelievably irritating and I found myself wanting to punch her so many time during the whole thing - her stupidity was actually beyond me. However, the ending of the book, just wow. I have to find out what happens next no matter how awful the character development was - I'm just hoping that Veronica Roth pulls her finger out with the characterisation in this sequel as it has ever so much promise and I'm really looking forward to finding out what happens.

Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Again, like Clockwork Princess, I've only read the first one in the series and plan on reading the second one before this comes out. I absolutely adored Delirium and thought it such an imaginative and unique idea, it could have turned out so boring but Lauren Oliver's writing made it a wonderful story. I thought it would have been good as a stand alone book as it seemed to have the right feel for the end of the book, so we shall see how she carries on with the series.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Oh my goodness, Cinder was one of my favourite books of this year without a shadow of a doubt. The characters, the story, the plot twists, oh so amazing. I found myself thinking this was a novel all in itself and not just a fairytale retelling - it was not what I had expected of it at all. It was a novel all in itself with a hint of the fairytale shining through the surface just there to remind you of it. It was so original and imaginative that I found myself delving into the story and not looking back. This is probably my most anticipated book out of all of them as I'm literally fan girling just thinking about it. I really can't contain myself about this one. It's also released around my birthday so that's an even better treat!

2B Tuesday | Throne of Glass

Where you show a book that has been sitting on your shelf (or on your e-reader) just waiting to be read. It can be new or have been sitting there for a long time. Just show that book some love and let us know why you bought it or why it has been  sitting there -- originally by Laura's Adventures in Bookland.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Meet Celaena Sardothien. Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen year old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake: she got caught.

Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her free in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament - fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin's heart be melted?

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I randomly picked this book up when I was in WHSmiths, just because there was an offer on and I had to pick another book. I was feeling quite adventurous for me so I picked up a random book not knowing what it was about or any reviews on it and bought it on a whim. 

I got drawn in my the absolutely beautiful cover - now I don't normally like covers with pretty much just a figure on the front but this one I thought was brilliant. You can just see so much emotion in this cover and it looks as though it doesn't give anything away other than the fact that she's possibly (if she is indeed the protagonist of the book) a fighter. The only thing that I don't like is the red writing, it slightly ruins an almost moody feel that this book gives off.

This has been on my shelf for a couple of months now, only because I keep on finding books that I've heard are good and want to read them as soon as possible, and only because I haven't heard much about this one I seem to be pushing it to the back. This is, however, the next on my to be read list, so let us hope that nothing gets in the way this time.

30 Day Book Challenge [1/30]

I found the 30 day book challenge through Blog Of Erised here on blogger, so I decided to give it a go and work my way through the days each Monday, so here it goes.

Day 1 - Your favourite book of all time

To be quite honest, I don't believe in having an all time favourite book. Just because I think that there are so many good books out there to find and read and you never know when something will overtake the one you treasured so dearly in your heart. There are books I like and books I adore but for the time and my favourites change monthly I can assure you. For the time being I am going to choose:

'Northern Lights' by Philip Pullman

I was just looking through my books and having a look at which one I would call my favourite out of the ones I actually own. There were a few which I thought were amazing but in actual fact they all come second to this book. The others were 'Clockwork Angel' by Cassandra Clare and 'Cinder' by Marissa Meyer, and although I thought they were absolutely brilliant, I have realised that I love them mainly for the characters. This book however has the excitement, action, suspense, plot, plot twist and the characters to boot. This is 100% the full package in my eyes and although the characters weren't ones you exactly swoon over - like the ones in the other books mentioned - they were strong, believable ones instead that are the core of a good storyline.

Book Buys | November 2012

 I was in one of my local charity shops the other day and I picked up a couple of books which caught my eye. Now in the charity shops near me I'll be lucky to see anything I like because I find the books to be of a certain taste which most certainly isn't mine. But I got "The Good Thief" by Hannah Tinti and "Mister Monday" by Garth Nix on a whim for £1 each, and they sounded just my cup of tea so we'll see what I think of them both.

I've also been wanting the "Song of Ice and Fire" series box set by George R.R. Martin for a while now so I thought, why not, while I have a little bit of extra money to be spending. This is going to take me ages to get through so I'm looking forward to keeping myself busy for at least a year due to the fact that I don't like reading books in a series one after the other.

"City Of Bones" by Cassandra Clare

I had high expectations for City Of Bones as I had previously read Clockwork Angel first, in the prequel series to this one, and was thoroughly astounded. I can definitely say without hesitation that I was not disappointed.

Clary (Clarissa) Fray is a normal human, living her life as a normal human would do so. That is until she gets drawn into the world of the shadow hunters whereupon she realises that not all in her world is what it seems, and that a lot of secrets have been kept from her by the people she loved and trusted.

Let us start off with the basics. This book is the first book in 'The Mortal Instruments' series and was written before it's prequel 'The Infernal Devices' series. City of Bones is set in a modern day society, whereas Clockwork Angel was set in the 19th century in 1878 and this was the only difference I happened upon in the beginning. At the start I found myself really disliking this book as everything seemed exactly the same as it was in Clockwork Angel; the characters were similar, the plot was similar and even some of the things that the characters said were similar - I just thought that I was reading the same book but in a different time zone and this disappointed me. That is until it got into the nitty gritty of the book, things started getting interesting, the characters were coming to their own and turned out to be nothing like the characters I once thought they were. When I actually finished the book I found myself thinking that if I would have read this book first I would have thought the same about Clockwork Angel as I thought about this book initially, but was proven completely wrong. 

After the initial slight disappointment, I realised that this was pretty much nothing like The Infernal Devices, other than the fact it followed the world of the shadow hunters, and the plot was a masterpiece in itself. Everything was ridiculously well but fast paced and action packed and there wasn't one scene which bored me at all. Every time I thought something was going to happen, something completely different and unexpected happened instead - this is what I loved about the book, the fact it was so very unpredictable. The unpredictability made the plot twists even more ground breaking in my eyes, they were absolutely amazing and out of every single twist (and there was a lot) I did not even have the slightest hint that they would have been coming. There was one twist which I had an inkling about, but it was a very small inkling, but other than that everything made me sit up in astonishment at what I had just read. I literally found myself sitting at the edge of my bed for a lot of the book as it was so gripping.

I loved each and every character, and there was no character that I particularly hated. I found that I got to know each of them well throughout the book, with enough to be left thinking about as well, and even the sub characters were well distinguished. However much I loved these characters I do think that they aren't as good as the ones in Clockwork Angel - Will pips Jace to the post any day with his quick wit, charming nature and just the hilarity of himself, with Jace I found myself smirking on occasion but it seemed a little too put on and fake for me. 

Upon reading this book, because I had read Clockwork Angel first, I was learning a lot more about the shadow hunter world than I previously knew. This created a great basis for the rest of the book as everything was explained brilliantly and there wasn't a thing that Clary didn't know that I didn't know or wasn't fully aware of. The complexity of the world was explained so well that I found myself feeling as though I was part of the book and was there in that time and place alongside them, I found myself picturing everything so clearly that I almost forgot I was in my boring bedroom reading a book instead of in a vampire lair.

Clarissa Clare is a literary genius who everyone should read at least once in their life, her worlds are so enchanting and I can say that the two books that I have read of hers have been ranked in the top 3 books of the year so far for me. If you haven't read any of her books, where have you been?

★★★★★

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson

Oh my goodness, I have been wanting to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for ages due to the massive hype about it as well as the movie - of course I wanted to read it before I watched the movie however, but I was not disappointed. I would say I wasn't disappointed in the slightest but that is the tiniest bit untrue.

I am going to take the synopsis of the book from goodreads as I found the story to be a little bit confusing to explain. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch - and there's always a catch - is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstoon genius with a cache of authority issues.

The last few books I've read have been young adult, and in no patronising way, they haven't been the most challenging reads for me in a long time. Therefore, when I have this book thrust upon me it's a bit of a shock, what with the financial and law jargon that you are bombarded with for at least the first 50 - 100 pages of the book. This however, can be glanced over, you don't need to understand the majority of the technicalities as it isn't really about that - I glazed over them, just reading words and not understanding, and I understood the book 90% of the time and what was happening in the story. The jargon was a little bit frightening at first and I was worried that it would take over the book, as it is classed as an adult novel, but I found myself pleasantly surprised.

The plot has wonderful pacing for a long winded book, each part of the story has enough time spent on it to really get into it and feel connected with it. The beginning was an introduction, then came the research into the new project, then came the nitty gritty when things started coming together, and it got a final resolve* in the end. It was enthralling and I found myself trying to work out for myself what has happened to the girl that disappeared when we were given clues to guide us, I stared at these clues for a good 5 minutes sometimes trying to work out what they meant, and that is the sign of a good book - one where you have no idea and have so many different options as to what may have happened.

Larssons novel actually had suspects, and a lot of them at that - each of them had a different personality and a different motive and this made it even more wonderful to read as in your head you wonder whether a certain someone could have had anything to do with it. I loved the way you came to the conclusion it was one person and suddenly the perspective would change, and another suspect was in the firing line - it was just go go go and there was hardly any time to breath.

The main characters were well developed, and throughout the book you felt as though you knew them - or as much of them as they were willing to reveal. They were masterpieces in themselves and were a lot more complicated than some of the people I've read about. Characters should be complicated as people are complicated and aren't just love or hate but are a mixture of lots of different ingredients. There was no character in particular that was badly written or I wish had some extra layer to them as everything seemed masterfully mapped out and I have absolutely no problem with them whatsoever.

The only thing that disappointed me a little was the ending, I just feel as though there were a million other ways that it could have turned out, but he seemed to cop out at the very last moment and took the easy route. Everything else was so amazingly complicated and it just ended so simply. On another note, sometimes when I was reading I didn't get how they came to certain conclusions - now I don't know whether this is because I glazed over the words - but I just felt as though some but not all bits weren't explained properly in order to understand how they'd figured it out. These points, however, are minuscule in comparison to how amazing the rest of the novel was.

This was actually the first adult novel I've read this year and I absolutely adored it - it was a fast paced, action packed, thrill of a roller coaster that I would love to ride again in the next novel. Fantastic, absolutely fantastic.

★★★★★

*When I say final resolve I mean there's a conclusion, as I don't want to give anything away about what happens.

What Have I Been Reading | October 2012

"Across The Universe" by Beth Revis

Well I can honestly say I've never felt like this about any book in my entire life. It's odd - I absolutely loved Across The Universe as well as really disliking it and I think whilst writing this review I will decide what rating to give it.

Amy and her parents are from Earth; they are being frozen and carried on a spaceship to the new Earth, Centauri Earth, to be the leaders of the new world they plan to build out there and will be reanimated upon their arrival in 300 years time. However, Amy is awoken 50 years before they are due to land and gets thrust into a world of lies and deceit whereupon someone is trying to kill the frozen people of Earth.

One thing I loved about this book was it's ability to create a scenery. The ship world alone was amazingly complex, everything was described in detail - the different sections, what the people that inhabit it do and the intricacies of the technology. I felt instantly as if I was there in that world with them and wasn't left wondering about certain things. There was probably more description than was needed with regards to that, but what I love about a book is being described something but also being left with something to do with that imagination upstairs - this was perfect for me.

I've recently read another book about people being frozen (A Long Long Sleep), and this was definitely nothing like that which was a plus - the story was interesting and original, the idea behind everything was quite plain and simply genius. Everything was slightly predictable though if you really thought about it, and even the main plot twist wasn't too surprising either which was kind of disappointing. The 'red herring' in the novel was no more of a red herring than an elephant as well which really annoyed me, as a bit of proper 'murder mystery' wouldn't have gone a miss. It seemed like an idea was slightly lost in space as it may be.

Thinking back, the characters were bland - they had no personality, nothing that makes them tick, no real passion, they just seemed to be there to make the story and anybody could have taken those roles. They were all pretty stereotypical - the hero, his sidekick, the heroine, the bad guy. I really have nothing more to say on that subject as the characters were just lifeless.

I think the thing that kept me interested most of all, was the idea of learning more about the ship and what lies were being spread around it and about it. What was Elder, the second in line to the leadership, or Amy going to find out next, and how was it going to affect them and those around them? It was definitely an intriguing book to say the least and this intrigue does make me wish that the book didn't end in some respects.

This book really is like marmite to me. I just feel as though it's a lot of loose ends, which when tightened up could form an amazing masterpiece - it just needs that extra something.

★★★

"Delirium" by Lauren Oliver

They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I've always believed them. Until now.

Again, I'd heard mixed reviews on ∫Delirium, so I was extremely keen to check it out and give my viewpoint. I don't really know what I was expecting, other than something a little too 'lovey dovey' for my likings - I was proven very wrong.

There was once a time when love was prominent around the human species and now it is considered a contagious disease that goes by the name of'amor deliria nervosa'. In the world, it is wrong to feel affection towards another human being and at the age of 18 everyone gets a 'cure' to make sure they never contract the deadly disease of love. Lena is more than content to live by the rules and looks forward to the operation where upon she will be safe - until she meets Alex.

This book really reminded me of a deeper version of the Uglies series, just in the way it's about a girl who is more than happy with society until something happens and she wants to rebel. Nothing wrong with the comparison whatsoever as both books are equally as good as the other - Delirium just seems to have a lot more of a deeper meaning, however, it cuts to the core with a lot more force. There are a lot of subtly deep messages lying in this book to do with love and being yourself that relate to the world we live in now, they have been cleverly crafted into this book in a way that makes them seem like lessons to be learned as well as creating the wonderful story.

The writing was a little too wordy for my likings, everything was described a little too much. Great description is one thing, but describing something for no reason at all is another. I found myself being swamped in metaphors and similes that weren't entirely necessary and I think the book would have been a lot shorter had they been cut down a lot. Other than that I found the writing to be enthralling and  a lot of the time I was unable to put this book down as it was easy to read, well paced with a rich storyline - It was a bit predictable with the twists and turns but with a 'forbidden romance' kind of book it's generally always predictable.

I related to Lena in every way possible, she's pretty much me - from personality right down to the looks (give an inch in height) - I guess this is why I could sympathise with her so much. I believe there was the right amount of progression of her falling in love as there could be in a book with regards to her personality as well. Being insecure, doubting herself, doubting Alex, being worried about the system; these are all the great ways that Lauren Oliver built up to the idea of Lena even liking Alex, let alone the big 'L' word. Alex was every other male lead thinking about it, there was nothing special about him, he did pretty much the same as any other lead who likes a girl does in a book so there's not really much to say on his part, and due to this, it made their romance slightly stereotypical.

The storyline was brilliant in the way it made you think. I was constantly imagining myself in that environment and feeling a sympathy towards Lena in the way that I don't think I could live in a society like that. I was comparing it to life now and how things would change if it were like that in the present day. The actual content of the book was good, even if it just ticked all the boxes of a general story and everything seemed to happen at the right time without longing anything out too much.

Overall I loved this book but the writing and the overly long unnecessary descriptions put a slight downer on it. This has definitely, however, left me thinking a lot about the world we live in and that we shouldn't just take what we have for granted. This book highlights an aspect of what life is about in my opinion and I know I wouldn't want to give that up.

★★★★

Book Haul | October 2012