Booktube-a-Thon Goals!

The Booktube-a-Thon starts Monday 7/14/14 and runs until Sunday 7/20/14.

I don't do Youtube, but I've been wanting try out a read-a-thon for a while, so I figured this is as good a time as any. 

There are seven challenges this year, but I'm really only participating in two of them, which I will mention with the books they go with. My biggest goal is to complete 2100 pages in the week (or 300 pages a day.)

So without further adieu, here is the list of books I plan to read:

#1 - City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

 This book doesn't complete any of the challenges, but it is 725 pages long, so that will cover a huge chunk of my page goal for the week.

#2 - Reboot by Amy Tintera 

 This book completes the "book with red on the cover" challenge. There are 365 pages in this book, bringing the page count up to 1090.

#3 - Rebel by Amy Tintera

Finishing this will complete another challenge (start and finish a series). The page count is 340, which brings the total to 1430.


#4 - Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

This book doesn't complete any challenges, but has 433 pages, bringing the total to 1863 pages.

#5 - The Duff by Kody Keplinger

This is the last book I am going to try to read. It has 277 pages, which will bring the total page count to 2140, which is just above what I am hoping to reach.

Truthfully, I don't think I will be able to finish all of these. I have never attempted to read so much in my entire life, but I want to at least give it a go.

New Bookshelves/Bookshelf tour!

It's taken almost an entire year to build these, but I am so glad they are finally done!! 

Here's kind of a crappy picture of what the shelves looked like  bare, just after getting them done:

I was so excited, that I immediately started putting my books up after taking this picture, and didn't even think about getting a decent one. So here is what the shelves currently look like:

If you can't tell, I am a little obsessed with penguins... 
The first two book cases are all of the books that I've currently read. They're sorted by series/books by the same other and then single books. The third book case is sorted in the same way, but are books that I still need to read and the last book case is all of my adult books and a few classics. 

Here's some pictures that break down the shelves some more (sorry for the weird angles, I don't have a tripod to take level pictures with and photoshop skills aren't very good):

Book case 1 - Shelves 1 and 2:

Top Shelf: Everneath, Everbound and Evertrue by Brodi Ashton. Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake. Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore.
Second Shelf: Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince, Clockwork Princess, City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels and City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay and Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins.

Book case 1 - Shelves 3 and 4:

Third Shelf: Matched, Crossed and Reached by Allie Condie. Hush, Hush, Crescendo, Silence and Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick. Beautiful Creature, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos, Beautiful Redemption and Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.
Fourth Shelf: Torment, Passion, Fallen in Love, Rapture by Lauren Kate (I own Fallen, but a friend is borrowing it.) Rot and Ruin, Dust and Decay, Flesh and Bone, Fire and Ash by Jonathon Maberry.  Shatter Me, Unite Me, Unravel Me and Ignite Me by Tahareh Mafi. Wake, Fade and Gone by Lisa McMann.

Book case 1 - Bottom Shelf

Vampire Academy, Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead. The Host, Twilight, Eclipse, New Moon and Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer (I just noticed those are out of order, which I will go fix, but don't feel like taking another picture of.) Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant by Veronica Roth.

Book case 2 - Shelves 1 and 2

Top Shelf: The Cirque du Freak series by Darren Shan. Pivot Point and Split Second by Kasie West. Paranormalcy, Supernaturally and Endlessly by Kiersten White.
Second Shelf: The Darkest Minds and Never Fade by Alexandra Bracken. Poison Princess and Endless Knight by Kresley Cole. The first three books in the Shadow Falls Series by C.C. Hunter (which somehow got turned around and upside down). Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight by Sara J Maas.

Book case 2 - Shelves 3 and 4:

 Third Shelf: Cinder, Scarlet and Cress by Marissa Meyer. Alice in Zombieland and Through the Zombie Glass by Gena Showalter. The Scorpio Races, Shiver, Linger, and Forever by Maggie Stiefvater.
Fourth Shelf: Chime by Frannie Billingsley. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. Eve by Anna Carey. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey. Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. More Than This by Patrick Ness. Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson and Paper Hearts by Yovanoff.

Book case 3 (All the books I haven't read) - Shelves 1 and 2:

Top Shelf: The Circle and Fire by Sarah B Elfgren and Mats Strandberg. Incarceron and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher. Blood Magic and The Blood Keeper by Tessa Gratton. The 4th and 5th books in the Shadow Falls series by C.C. Hunter. The Immortal Rules, The Eternity Cure and The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa.
Second Shelf: Bloodlines, The Golden Lily, and Gameboard of the Gods by Richelle Mead. Incarnate, Asunder and Infinite by Jodi Meadows. As you Wish and Sweetly by Jackson Pearce. Black City, Phoenix and Wings by Elizabeth Richards. Shade and Shine by Jeri Smith-Ready. 

Book case 3 - Shelves 3 and 4:

Third Shelf: The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight and Dreams of Gods and Monster by Laini Taylor. Reboot and Rebel by Amy Tintera. The entire Soul Screamers series by Rachel Vincent. The Program and The Treatment by Suzanne Young.
Fourth Shelf: Crewel by Gennifer Albin, The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnette. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. Antigoddes by Kendare Blake. Struck by Jennifer Bosworth. Damselfly by Jennie Bates Bozic. Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare. Gregor and the Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins. Invisibility by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan. This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen. Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza. Angelfall by Susan Ee.

Book case 3 - Shelves 5 and 6:

Fifth Shelf: The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda. Eve and Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate. Masque of Red Death by Bethany Griffin. Fire with Fire by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman. Identical by Ellen Hopkins. Wool by Hugh Howey. The Duff by Kody Keplinger. Proxy by Alex London. The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long. Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr. The Farm by Emily McKay. Arclight by Josin McQuein. 
Sixth Shelf: Let the Sky Fall by Shannon Messenger. The Beautiful and the Cursed by Page Morgan. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige. Forgotten by Cat Patrick. Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock. The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult. The Thirst Vol. 1 by Christopher Pike. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Undeadly by Michele Vail. In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy and The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff. 

The last book case:

I'm not going to go into a detailed report of all of these books. The top shelf has some Kresely Cole books. The second shelf has A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, a bunch of Kim Harrison books and two book by Lynda Hilburn. The third shelf is all of the Argeneau books by Lynsay Sands.
The fourth shelf has some random psychological thrillers, a random adult book and Dracula. And the fifth shelf has the Barnes and Noble leather editions of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Jane Austen books, a collection of the Brother's Grimm books, House of Leaves and three Stephen King books. 


I have a 108 read books from the first two book cases and 80 unread books from the third book case (I'm not counting anything from the fourth book case, since most of it is stuff that I read when I was in high school, about 5-6 years ago, and the rest is just random books that I was given by other people.)

My boyfriend and I have come to the agreement that I can't buy anymore books until most of my unread books have been read (he says I have to read all of them, I'm just aiming to read about 60 of them.)  I've decided that at the end of any book reviews I do from books that I own the physical copy of, I'm going to put an update on how many books I still have left to read. 

Hope you enjoyed this kind of picture bookshelf tour! I really love my new bookshelves. I seriously can't help myself from wandering past them every once and a while to gaze at them. They're so pretty!!!!

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

I'm not going to say too much about the plot of this book, since it is the second in a series and I don't want to spoil the first one for anyone, but it takes place a few months after the events of Shiver. 

Once again, I really loved the writing in this. I think if the writing wasn't so wonderful, I probably wouldn't enjoy these books. They're not bad books, but I feel like there's not a lot going on while at the same time being kind of hard to follow. This book has 4 perspectives in it and they change around every few pages, which makes it really hard to keep track of who is talking and what problems belong to who. Eventually, I got the hang of following the 4 perspectives, but I also felt that they weren't really necessary. 

Like I said, I didn't feel like there was a lot going on either. All four of the main characters had their own problems, but I felt like Grace was the only one who had something serious going on, and everyone tried to ignore it most of the book until the very end. 

I like Isabel as a character, because she tells it how it is and doesn't sugar coat anything for anyone, but all of her parts were moping over Jack or being conflicted about Cole.

Cole, who is a new wolf in this book, annoyed me. All he did the whole book was complain about how he wanted to lose himself to the wolf so he wouldn't have to deal with the problems of his life, which ended up being pretty much nothing. He had a good childhood and a good family, but his parents expected too much out of him so he turned towards being a rock star. yup, his life was so horrible...

Sam is a good love interest for Grace, but he's also a little unstable. It makes sense, considering what his parents did to him, but I felt like there wasn't really anything interesting going on with him in this book. All he talked about was how much he loves Grace and how different his perspective on life is after the events of Shiver. 

Truthfully, Grace is the only one with a really interesting story in this book. She keeps getting horrible headaches, fevers, and nosebleeds. Like I said, everyone tries to ignore this until the very end when all hell breaks loose.

Don't get me wrong, even though I had some problems with this book, I still really enjoyed it. I just felt like there could've been a lot more and that this was really only filler book to get to the big finale of Forever (which I have already jumped into and will be posting a review for as soon as I finish it.)

I don't think this was quite as good as Shiver, so I'm giving it 3.5 stars out of 5.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Grace has been obsessed with the wolves in the woods behind her house for years. After being attacked by a group of them and then saved by another, she's felt an attachment to them--especially the one that saved her. 

Sam has been obsessed with Grace ever since he saved her from his wolfish family. Too bad he's only human during the warmest months of the year. 

For 6 years, these two have secretly pined after each other from a distance. That is, until the day Sam is shot in his wolf form and manages to change back into a human on Grace's porch. 

As you can probably guess, this book is all about werewolves, but in this story, the werewolves only become wolves when it gets below a certain temperature and every year after that, it must be warmer and warmer for them to turn back into a human until they eventually turn completely wolf. I thought this was a fairly interesting take on werewolves, though I think the part about them become a wolf completely was a little disappointing. There was a character that was introduced that we will probably never get any more information on as it was his last year as a human. But it also made for a lot of drama since it was Sam's last year as a human as well.

This book is predominantly a romance, which is why I think it was hard for some people to get into and actually enjoy. A good 75% of this book is just Grace and Sam being in love with each other, which wasn't too bad once I got used to it, but it was a little hard to accept in the beginning since it was a case of insta-love. 

I wasn't sure if there was going to much else to this book then Grace and Sam being worried about Sam changing and never being human again until about 2/3rds of the way through, when the action picks up. A kid that went to Grace's school--Jack--was bitten by the wolves towards the beginning of the book and closer to the end he goes kind of crazy and makes life difficult for Grace. He knows that Grace was bitten by the wolves (6 years ago when Sam rescued her) but that she never actually changed. He has it in his head that she knows some miracle cure and that she will help him if he kidnaps Sam. So most of the action happens at that point. I flew through the last hundred pages or so.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. There were some aspects that could've been done better, but I didn't hate any of it. I really enjoyed the writing. The first Maggie Stiefvater book I read was The Scorpio Races, which I absolutely loved, so I knew I had to give the rest of her books a chance. She has a really good way of stringing words together.

If you can get past the insta-love and the heavy romance, this is a pretty good book, especially for werewolf lovers.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Thomas wakes up to find himself in a a dark, moving box with no memories of himself except for his name. When the box comes to a stop and the door opens up, he finds himself in the Glade--a large open area surrounded by giant stone walls--surrounded by a bunch of teenage boys who also have no memories of themselves except for their names. He comes to discover that some of the boys had been in this place for 2 years and that outside the walls of the Glade is a giant Maze that they haven't been able to solve in that time. 

Thomas is different than the other Gladers. He feels that the place is familiar and he has a desire to be a runner, like he was born for it. He's the first new Glader that didn't act terrified for a few weeks after coming out of the Box. Everyone is suspicious of him, especially those that have gone through the Changing--something that happens after being stung by monsters in the Maze that gives them some memories back. 

It only gets worse when the first girl ever shows up in the Box, the day after Thomas did. And she shows up with a message that everything is going to change and that she is the last one. That's when all chaos breaks loose. 

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was really fast paced and kept my attention the whole way through, but there were some weird points. It took a while for me to be okay with the weird lingo they use in the Glade. I still don't like it, but I learned to basically tune it out. There were also some magical parts of this book that were explained as being scientific but were kind of unbelievable. Apparently, there's just some really amazing technology in this future world. 

I felt that Thomas was a pretty good main character. He kept a level head about himself most of the time. He wasn't perfect, especially towards the end, but I really liked that. I thought that Newt, Minho and Chuck were good secondary characters as well. I didn't really like Teresa, but I have a feeling that we weren't really meant to. 

There wasn't really a good explanation about why these kids were thrown into the Maze and I feel like the full explanation isn't really going to make much sense. I do plan on reading the rest of the books in the series, so I guess I'll see where it goes.

I give this book 3.5 stars.

Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

I have mixed feelings about this book. When I first found out that Ridley and Link were getting their own spin-off series I was so excited and immediately pre-ordered the book. Those 2 characters were my favorites from the Beautiful Creatures series. For this reason, I think I will like this series better than the whole Beautiful Creatures series, but I think the first Beautiful Creatures book was laid out a lot better than this book. 

It was an exciting and fast read, but there were some plot points that seemed kind of out of place. Hopefully, they will be explored in the future books, but they just felt out of place. The 2 biggest examples I have of this are the Binding rings that Lena gives everyone int he beginning of the book and the flashback dreams that Ridley has. Yeah, Ridley and Link had some reactions from the rings, but they seemed just like a convenient filler. And Ridley's dreams gave us more of Ridley's history, but Ridley never officially connected them to anything that happened throughout the book.

The other big flaw in this was Lennox Gates' sudden change of heart. He starts off as being the bad guy and about halfway through he decides he's totally in love with Ridley and wants to help her and Link. I didn't really feel like their was good justification for that. Him and Ridley didn't really spend a whole bunch of time together, and even though they had a connection from the past, that doesn't justify him being head over heels for her after like a week of just seeing her across the club. 

Now, don't get me wrong. Despite these flaws, it was still a really good book. I liked all the new characters that were introduced and the overall plot of the series with Silas Ravenwood seems really exciting. Also, this book ends on a horrible cliff-hangar, so I think even if I disliked the book, I would have to pick up the next one. I am excited for the next one, though I have no idea when it will come out. The only hint that there is even going to be a book 2 of this series is the "To be continued..." at the end of this book. It sounds like it's going to be awhile until the next one comes out, but I will definitely be getting it when it comes out.

Overall, I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. 

Top Ten Books I've read so far this year.

So far this year I have read 47 books and short stories. Most of them have been amazing with only a handful being mediocre or bad. This is just a quick list of my top ten for the year so far in order of when I read them.

First and Second: Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight by Sarah J Maas

Third and Fourth: The Archived and The Unbound by Victoria Schwab 

Fifth and Sixth: Grave Mercy and Dark Triumph by Robin Lefevers

Seventh, Eighth and Ninth: Cinder. Scarlet and Cress by Marissa Meyers

And Tenth: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

All ten of these books get a complete 5 out of 5 stars from me. Not only are the stories wonderful, but they are all written extremely well with amazing characters.