Tuesday 30 June 2015

Top Ten Tuesday (23)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the amazing Broke And The Bookish.


Top Books I've Read So Far in 2015

  
 I haven't read that many book so far in 2015 (only 24 so far), so I don't quite have 10 that would be my top 10. But these ones have made a big impression on me, and are my top picks so far this year that I would suggest to other readers.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1)Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, #1)The Avery Shaw Experiment  

Throne of Glass was epic. That.Is.All. But seriously I loved the first book in the series and I really need to get onto reading the others. Magic Bites, would not normally be a book I would automatically go for, but I was in the mood for something a bit different. I am so glad I picked this series up, because it is SO good. Just what I needed when I was going through a reading slump. The Avery Shaw Experiment looks a bit childish, but it is definitely one of my favorites this year. It totally blew away my expectations, and found a place on my favorites list. Lastly To All The Boys I Loved Before, is another book that exceeded my expectations. A cute summer read, that was just perfect.

Deadly Class, Vol. 1: Reagan YouthSaga, Volume 4

I've read quite a few Manga/ Graphic Novels this year. But these 2 are my top picks. Saga never fails to impress me and I can't wait for the next episode. Deadly Class, was a great GN about assassin school. A bit brutal and with lots of violence and drugs, it totally satisfied my needs for something a bit different.

What books are your favorites so far this year? 

Sunday 28 June 2015

Giveaway- Just Couldn't Put It Down July

http://www.stuckinbooks.com/2015/06/just-couldnt-put-it-down-july-hop-sign.html

And the Winner Is....


Samantha Loving



So the theme of the July giveaway is 'Books I Just Couldn't Put Down' and is hosted by Stuckinbooks . So I'm giving you guys the chance to win a paperback copy of ONE of the books featured below. All of these books I adored reading and were too addicting to put down. I've picked a variety, so hopefully there's something that interests you :)

Good Luck guys and hope you have fun!


The Program (The Program, #1)Cruel BeautyThis Song Will Save Your LifeStolen: A Letter to My Captor
   

Rules

  • Giveaway open INTERNATIONALLY provided The Book Depository ships to your country for free.
  • One winner will win a choice of ONE of the books featured above.
  • I will not be responsible for lost or damaged packages from The Book Depository.
  • If you are under 13 years old please get a parent or guardians permission before entering the giveaway.
  • Multiple entries under fake accounts will not be accepted. I will check...
  • The winner has 48 hours to reply to my email, otherwise the prize will be redrawn and a new winner picked. Likewise goes if you are chosen via random.org and you have entered unfairly, you will be disqualified and another winner chosen at random.  





Friday 26 June 2015

Feature and Follow (21)


Here's this weeks question:

 

Is there a book that you were required to read in school that you actually loved ?

FrankensteinAlmost all the books I had to read at high-school I despised. I think it was because there was no choice about it and the constant discussions and interpretation of the book took all the enjoyment out of it. However, there was one book I really enjoyed when I went back later to read it again, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I don't know why this one stood out among the rest, but it was actually so good when I wasn't forced to read it haha.



Feature & Follow is a blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read. The purpose is to meet new people and gain more followers in the book blogging community.

Monday 22 June 2015

Feature and Follow (20)


Here's this weeks question:

 

If you were to get a tattoo, what would it say or what would the graphic be? Or if you have a tattoo share a picture and it's meaning.

Lion in a suit tattoo by Emrah Özhan | Tattoomagz.comI've been wanting to get a tattoo for such a long time. But knowing it's going to be on me for life is a big commitment. I'm more worried about that than the actual pain haha There's also the fact that I want it to mean something, not that there's anything with just a pretty tattoo. But personally I want my tattoo to represent a part of my life. I've had a few ideas so far but mostly I want something animal related because I work in the veterinary profession. I'm thinking a mandala style lion on my inner forearm but including Tongan design, since I volunteered there as a vet nurse.

In all honesty I don't know if I'll ever get a tattoo despite wanting one. I just don;t know if I'll be 100% happy with a design to have it on my body for life.




Feature & Follow is a blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read. The purpose is to meet new people and gain more followers in the book blogging community.

Monday 15 June 2015

Review- In Real Life (Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang)


In Real Life

Synopsis


Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role-playing game where she spends most of her free time. It's a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero. It's a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends.
 
But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer--a poor Chinese kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then sells them to players from developed countries with money to burn. This behavior is strictly against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person's real livelihood is at stake. 

From acclaimed teen author (Little BrotherFor the Win) and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow and Koko Be Good creator Jen Wang, In Real Life is a perceptive and high-stakes look at adolescence, gaming, poverty, and culture clash.                                Goodreads.com


My Review 


I went into IRL (In Real Life) knowing that it was a book about a girl gamer and little else. And maybe had I not read the foreword that’s what it would have remained. However, by chance since I NEVER read the authors notes at the beginning regarding their inspiration for the story. I got drawn into Cory Doctorow’s development of IRL and the secret messages of economics and politics it entails.

The story of IRL surrounds Anda and her joining of an online game guild in which she’s inducted into the ranks and learns that she can make real life money killing ‘gold farmers’ which are usually bots/code created by people to farm items which they sell in the real world for money; something which is considered illegal in game. But not all gold farmers are bots and Anda learns this when she befriends a boy who lives all the way in a Chinese Province who ‘farms’ for 12hours a day just to earn money (which he probably sees little of). Suddenly not everything is black and white, especially when you get to know the person behind the screen.


In short, IRL is a story about a girl gamer who finds herself a major player in a MMORPG. For those of you not who are not fluent with nerd speak that’s a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game. But it’s also much more than that. It’s about the internet and the way it can bring people together from all over the world onto common ground, for a particular cause. Whether that be something simple such as the organisation of a siege on the dragon of Um-thor-Quor, or to rally for real life peace protests. It puts into perspective how the power of the internet can be used for more that just googling your name, and looking at cat memes.

This was such a short easy read, but with a lot of heart and an interesting focus not often seen in YA. Thoroughly enjoyable!!

My rating: 5/5

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Top Ten Tuesday (22)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the amazing Broke And The Bookish.


Top Seven Most Anticipated Releases For the Rest of 2015

Soundless  Stand-Off (Winger, #2)Tonight the Streets Are Ours Until Friday Night (The Field Party, #1)
So these 4 are all by authors I have read before. Richelle Mead is always one I watch out for and Soundless sounds (haha excuse the pun) like it has some good potential. Stand Off is the sequel to Winger which I adored. Andrew Smith has a great talent for writing characters that experience what it's really like to be a teenager.  After reading This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales, she went straight on to my auto-read list. She knows how to perfectly capture the difficulty of finding yourself as a teen. Her new book Tonight the Streets Are Ours sounds like its going to be a great read. Lastly, Abbi Glines never fails to disappoint me and her new release Until Friday Night is about two teens from different backgrounds but with similarly pained pasts who happen to find each other.

What You Left Behind Everything, Everything   Why Not Me?

What You Left Behind sounds like its going to bring a lot of feels. The story is about a teen boy who is left with his infant daughter after his girlfriend passes away from cancer, and all the struggles that go along with being a teen parent and the loss of losing someone. Everything Everything has been getting so much hype lately and the more I read about it, the more I need it in my hands right now. I am a huge Mindy Kaling fan, and while I haven't read her first memoir, I'm looking forward to her new relaease Why Not Me?. She's seems like such an awesome person, who proves girls can be funny too. 

What releases are you looking forward to? Let me know below :)

Thursday 4 June 2015

Review- Confess (Colleen Hoover)

Confess


Synopsis


Auburn Reed has her entire life mapped out. Her goals are in sight and there’s no room for mistakes. But when she walks into a Dallas art studio in search of a job, she doesn’t expect to find a deep attraction to the enigmatic artist who works there, Owen Gentry.For once, Auburn takes a risk and puts her heart in control, only to discover Owen is keeping major secrets from coming out. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything important to Auburn, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it.

The last thing Owen wants is to lose Auburn, but he can’t seem to convince her that truth is sometimes as subjective as art. All he would have to do to save their relationship is confess. But in this case, the confession could be much more destructive than the actual sin…                                   Goodreads.com


My Review 


Confess was my second Colleen Hoover novel, and solidified her in my auto buy authors list.

Confess, surrounds the two main characters Auburn and Owen who start a mutually beneficial relationship when Owen is searching for someone to help him in his gallery and Auburn is looking to earn some easy cash. Little do they know that their story actually started many years before. Both have led troubled lives with many trials and their story is woven together beautifully.  I can’t say much about this book without giving away some big spoilers. So I’m going to make this short.

The art in this book was beautiful, the fact that the author supplied art at all was amazing and it somehow added to the dynamic of the book. Each artwork told its own story, based on a confession that Owen drew (and were actually supplied by genuine readers of Colleen Hoover, or so I am told).
While funny, and romantic the book definitely holds your feelings at ransom especially near the end. The epilogue itself is a tear jerker and brings everything around in a full 360.

If you’re a Colleen Hoover fan, and you haven’t read this yet I highly suggest you get your caboose into gear and give it a try. This is also a great one to start out with if your new to her works, as the content is less challenging  than some of her other novels such as Hopeless.

My rating: 4/5

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Top Ten Tuesday (21)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the amazing Broke And The Bookish.


Top Ten Books I'd Love To See as Movies/TV



Wow there are so many books I'd love to see as either TV or Movies. After a quick look through my books these are the ones I came up with. Hope you enjoy and leave me a comment with your TTT.


Movies

The Program (The Program, #1)The Merciless

While I'm not really into horror movies. I think that The Merciless has all the makings of a good horror movie. It's got lots of suspense, blood shed and mind-fuckery. The Program is one of my  favorite books and I would love to see it as a movie, but I just don't know if they could pull it off. There's a lot of deep emotion and inner turmoil that goes on which may be hard to translate to the big screen.

This Song Will Save Your LifeStolen: A Letter to My Captor  The F- It List
This Song Will Save Your Life is a great coming of age story that would make a great indie film. Somewhere along the lines of Adventureland and The Way Way Back. The F*ck It List is also a kind of coming of age story that while is about cancer, the main focus is more on how to deal with it when it's your best friend who is dying. The novel deals with it in such a funny way but with a lot of heartfelt moments. Lastly Stolen: A Letter to My Captor, is one of my all time favorite books. It's one that makes you think and sometimes has you rooting for the 'bad' villain of the story. I would love to see this as an independent film made by an Australian film company. I think it has so much potential.

TV Series

Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, #1) Stray (Shifters, #1)   White Hot Kiss (The Dark Elements, #1)

Burn for Burn (Burn for Burn, #1)Deadly Class, Vol. 1: Reagan Youth
These 3 would make awesome TV shows I reckon. I imagine Magic Bites (Kate Daniels series) to have a kind of Buffy feel to it with it's kick-ass lady lead. Stray, also has a strong female lead and with all the sexiness that goes on, I could see it as another True Blood type series. White Hot Kiss (The Dark Elements Series) would be a more teenage friendly show, but still with some great fantasy elements that are a bit different from your average vampire and shape-shifter.

Deadly Class would make a great anime. While it is a little bit gorey and there's a lot of bloodshed, I could definitely see it as a R18 anime. Burn for Burn I would imagine as a kind of Pretty Little Liars type show with lots of mystery and intrigue.

What books would you like to see on the bigscreen/TV? Let me know below :)

May Wrap-Up


Wow we are half way through the year!! It's gone so fast, I can't believe it, and with the beginning of June, I celebrated my 25th Birthday...bring on the quarter life crisis haha. But I digress, May was a pretty good reading month for me. Bout of Books helped me push through a few books, but there were also a few I didn't get to read that I had planned on.

Finished

Because of Low (Sea Breeze, #2)   The Sin Eater’s Daughter (The Sin Eater’s Daughter, #1) To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1) The Marriage Trap (Marriage to a Billionaire, #2)

Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 1 (Ouran High School Host Club, #1) Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 2 (Ouran High School Host Club, #2)

So this month during the Bout of Books Read-a-Thon, I started Ouran High-school Host Club, since I've really been enjoying the anime. I can't say it's my favorite Manga, but it's pretty good and the characters translate well on paper and screen. I also continued with the Seabreeze series by Abbie Glines with Because of Low, which was a quite cute read that had lots of sexual tension. Continuing on with the contemporary reads I read To All The Boys I've Loved Before which I had been wanting to read for such a long time and it did not disappoint. This month I thought I better get reading some books that contributed to the challenges I am participating in this year, so I read The Sin Eater's Daughter, which is a debut author and also fantasy. I had kind of mixed feelings on this book, but in the end it was quite enjoyable if you can make it through the slow start. Lastly, I finished the month off with the romance The Marriage Trap, the second in the series. It plays on the typical millionaire trope, but was a nice light read.

Up Next In June


For June, I think I'm going to try and catch up on a few series that I've started this year. First up is Magic Burns, the second book in the Kate Daniels series. If I can get my hands on it, P.S. I still Love You, will be a definite read for this month. I really enjoyed To All the Boys I've Loved Before and I need to know what happens next. In May, I meant to read Crash Into You, but unfortunately didn't get the time to get to it, so that's on my list for this month. 
 Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, #2) P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2) Crash into You (Pushing the Limits, #3)
   

Other Favourites


So last month I became obsessed with Pinterest. I remember everyone talking about it ages ago, but I never really saw the appeal. But in the last couple weeks I have pinned an insane amount of things haha everything from clothes to hair to book related things, recipes and things that describe me in a nutshell. If you want to check it out my boards, click here.

So I also got Netflix last month and have spent alot of time watching new to me TV series. One of my faves this month is Blue Mountain State. It's a few years old, and is focused on College football. But unlike Friday Night Lights doesn't take itself too seriously and is reminiscent of American Pie if it were a TV show. This show is definitely not for the light hearted, there's lots of sex, drugs and cringe-worthy moments.

In regards to music I am in love with Lindsey Stirling. She is a violinist, and her music is all instrumental most of the time. But she has a modern flare and it's just amazing to listen too. I recommend you check her out if you want to hear some wicked talent, she also has amazing videos to go with her music.

 


What books did You read in the Month of May?  Which was your favorite? 

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