Blog Post Number BOOK BINGO DAY 1

Happy Monday (an oxymoron if ever there could be one)

My weekend somehow managed to be FILLED with ingesting pop culture and entertainment in preparation for Oscar nominations this week (hello my name is Megh and I’m a dork.)

In three days I saw:

• August: Osage County
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• Dallas Buyers Club
• Prisoners
• Don Jon
• Philomena
• Out of the Furnace
• Episodes 1-3 of Veronica Mars
• Golden Globes
• The last episode of Sherlock

THE LAST EPISODE OF SHERLOCK

I would throw up the text conversation I had chronicling my death also known as SHERLOCK HOLMES but it’s basically just swooning and cursing.

However, in the midst of all that, I FINISHED MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN.

Should other people read it? Eh. It was well written in the beginning and then it got sloppy and dry in the end. A lot of the action felt writer forced and I just had a hard time believing the emotion.

Despite that, HERE YOU GO. MY BOOK BINGO CARD SHEET.

How’s everyone else doing on their bingo sheet?

Blog Post Number Bingo Rules

UPDATE: TIME LIMIT ADDED

I’m so excited by the number of people that want in on this. It’s going to be SO MUCH FUN.

SO. RULES.

1. No rereads. This is about finding NEW books to read and the new experiences you have with said books!

2. You MUST post a short blurb about the book SOMEWHERE after you finish it. I don’t care if it’s on your blog, facebook, tumblr, bathroom stall. Just somewhere we can read about it and salivate over it. Sharing is caring! 🙂

3. ONE BOOK PER SPACE. Don’t be sneaky, for a book about a dragon, love triangle, magic, set in Paris, look below to Gimli for ruling.

4. TEN BINGO SPACES. Up, down, across, edges, whatever. The two lines must be in a row EACH, but not connected together (like, you can have straight down the I and straight down the O, as long as the I and O are complete). First to reach the two lines of Bingo gets a prize!

5. There is, however, a prize for finishing THE WHOLE CARD. And that isn’t limited to the first person, EVERY PERSON THAT COMPLETES THE CARD I WILL GIVE A PRIZE.

6. You MUST have started reading the book in 2014.

7. I PREFER YA, but if you have a book that fits the bill on the Bingo card, I will accept it.

8. Finally, LET ME KNOW YOU’RE DOING IT SO WE CAN GEEK OUT TOGETHER OMG I’M SO EXCITED

 

Added: 9. This contest is only valid through the year of 2014 and until my super awesome CONGRATS ON FINISHING THE BINGO CARD SHEET prizes run out.

Any and other rules that come up, I will make a note of it.

This isn’t a rule, but IF YOU COULD hashtag it #MeghsBookBingo that would make it so much easier for me to stalk you and your progress.

Happy reading, loves!

Blog Post Number Old Lady Alert

YOU GUYS JUST LOOK AT THIS.

Thank you, my dear friend over at Joy Writes Things for posting this on Facebook (not that she tagged me or anything but you know WHATEVER.)

Once I finish Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children I’ll update the card with ALL the books I’ve read so far in 2014. Following that, I’ll be posting an updated card after reading each new book and we will see who gets bingo first! I’m thinking of making the rules be that you have to have TWO lines of bingo in order to win.  I’ll also be thinking of ideas for prizes because if we’re going to do this right, we’re going to make this fun!

Anyone want to play bingo with me?

Blog Post Number Unpopular Opinion

I hate romance. Seriously, the cavemen had the right idea.

I’m not actually talking about person to person REAL life romance. I’m talking about the over indulgent, obsessive, ‘can’t get enough of your body despite you being a neurotic, indecisive, crazy person’ TOTALLY BELIEVABLE.

Not.

Obviously I’m being incredibly direct. You’re hard pressed to find any YA novel without a love interest nowadays (and thank God, because otherwise I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole .) Love is massively important in the YA genre. It’s where kids learn what they want and who they want. They can see and experience a whole relationship without having their heartbroken (much.)

Yet, my problem with romance stands more when it’s all encompassing. When romance is the only part of the book you care about or even remember.

Love should be supplemental, not all encompassing. If we lived our lives solely for the attention and time with our significant other, we would have no friends, no jobs, no lives. And rightly so, who would want to be around that?

But we fill our minds with these idealized dreams of love and romance, someone to come and save us from the perils of mediocrity instead of someone to come along and live in that mediocrity with us, to join us in the battle for believing, making the ordinary extraordinary.

Blog Post Number Book Recs

Happy Monday, everyone!

I’m starting it off right, rewatching the first Sherlock episode and eating some farmer’s market yogurt and blackberries. 

And as it is the first official Monday of 2014, I’ve decided to do something FUN.

BOOK RECS

I’ve been reading a FAIR amount of YA Lit this past week. It’s been a part of my goals for 2014 and, subsequently, the goals I posted last Friday.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

I was hesitant to read this at first, mainly due to the fact that I’d seen excerpts displaying the unique writing style and I worried it was too similar to the Levithan style in Will Grayson, Will Grayson that I wasn’t all that interested in. 

However, as the kindle library delivered this one first, it seemed that I had no choice but to go on an adventure with Juliette, Mafi’s storyteller and descriptive main character.

The imagery is beautiful. Mafi has a way of telling emotions and settings in disguise, challenging me to look at my own emotional descriptors and world building tells. Sometimes she gets a little too dramatic, but it’s YA so it’s accepted (and expected.) 

At first, I thought that so much of the story is within the mind of the protagonist that it wouldn’t make a good movie, but the action of it all proved me wrong. The stakes were high and mighty, the actions believable and the antagonist is DELICIOUS. I have a feeling we’re going to have some vindication in the next book of the series and I cannot wait. The love interest is perfectly fine, but a little too easy. Not as many stakes as Warner, who is so damaged it’s alluring. 

Maybe a little too flowery and sometimes I got really annoyed with Juliette’s waif tendency, but overall much better than I was expecting!

Rate: Totes Read!

But REALLY. I saved the best for last.

Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins

I picked up this book on a whim as I added purchases to my amazon cart in an after Christmas rage and I have never been so happy at a random purchase in my life. I saw Richa Parande’s post over at City of Books discussing anticipated books of 2014 (also where I learned about Shatter Me) and figured if the third book in the trilogy were coming out soon, I should read the first one. It ended up being a few cents more to buy the book and as I am always one for hard copies I splurged.

Oh. My. Heavens.

The cover makes it seem like it will be any other YA paranormal romance novel and it sort of kind of is but not really because DECEPTION it’s in fact extremely deep. The character’s voice is strong and solid, never wavering throughout the hefty story (never not once does she say ‘Oh my god,’ even in her thoughts. It got to be a little weird until I realized the character WOULD NEVER SAY THAT.) Astoundingly good.

And, unlike Shatter Me, I felt this book actually had some good stuff. It wasn’t all about the romance, which is a strong soapbox for me that we will go into at a different time. Sweet Evil, while containing some stellar romance, is actually about something bigger. It’s a Heart with an actual Story to tell, not just fluff for the masses. 

It shows me the type of story I want to tell.

Rate: READ. GO. DO. NOW.

Book Review: Entice, by Jessica Shirvington

Tuesday

• Jesus Time
• Novel: At 26,960 words
• Script: off
• Editing: Short (Edit: I’m on a roll with Unwanted! I’mma keep goin’!)
• Freelance: 1 hour
• Education: off (Edit: read HR)
• Read: Worldshaker by Richard Harland 
• Blog: Book Review
• To Do List

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Book Review, Part Deux!

Not that I’m better versed in the art of critically thinking through someone’s hard work in comparison to last time (I could probably talk your ear off were we in a physical conversation but there’s something so final about the Internet.) However, I’m living under the motto of “You can only get better!” So, that being emphatically stated, let’s begin!

Entice, by Jessica Shirvington

The second book in Shirvington’s angelic Embrace series, Entice picks up a few weeks after Embrace left off, with 17-year-old protagonist Violet Eden still getting the hang of her new Grigori powers and dealing with late night angelic visitors (sounding similar to Hush, Hush? Ironic, isn’t it.) She’s still in denial about her Grigori partner being her one true love, she’s still stuck between the choice of fight-or-flight, and she’s still struggling with the age old question “what do you do when the guy who takes your [spoiler] turns out to be a dark fallen angel with [spoiler] [spoiler]?” Standard teen life.

As with almost every series guest starring an angel cast, I liked the first book better. Though Entice introduces some fun new characters (Spence comes to mind as being particularly lovable and probably my favorite part of the whole book) while reinventing old ones (Steph and Onyx become more developed, a refreshing change of pace), the characters who are in sore need of development remain the same.

Basically, I’m not buying the main love interest.

In terms of conflict, Shirvington has placed them in the delicious position of forbidden love. But once she lifts that obstacle (a bit too easy, for my taste, though I appreciated her use of new characters to both lift the veil and then crash it back down), my eyes were opened as to how one dimensional Lincoln is as anything more than the guy she pines for (in the first book, you see him maybe 20% of the time).

Shirvington’s final book in the series comes out the first of March (though it’s already been released in Australia) and while I will absolutely read it, I don’t think it’s a series that will make it’s way to my bookshelf.

Then again, I just checked Entice‘s goodreads page and it received mostly favorable reviews, so what do I know? As always, read it yourself and tell me what you think.

YA Things of Note:

1. If the main character is a female, there is a 90% chance she has a bubbly, outgoing, one dimensional female best friend that is better at talking to boys, dressing fancy, and everything.

2. It’s more fun to garner an opinion of a character based off of how another character sees them, rather than the author telling you how to feel. (Shirvington does a good job with this.)

3. There’s no love like forbidden love.

4. It’s important to flesh out the romantic hero – make him dorky, make him stupid, make him questionable, but for Heaven’s sake make him HUMAN.

– Megh

Book Review: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

• Novel – Write 2222 words, be at 14,488 (Edit: Finished around 5pm)
• Script – Research/Plan
• Editing – off
• Freelance – 2 hours
• Education – YA Lesson  (Edit: Finished around 3pm)
• Reading – Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan
• Blog – Book Review

Book Review

If I’m honest, which I always try to be with you, Hypothetical Reader, I have no idea how to review a book. It’s truly a foreign concept, as I don’t even read book reviews. But in an effort to think critically and learn from the stories I read, I think reviews are an important step. So, here it goes.

I just finished reading Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick and I’m already going to like her as we are practically kin (except she is the basterd child of Patrick and I am the basterd child of Martin.) And when I say “finished reading” I mean “practically inhaled” because I sucked that book down in a 12 hour period like a stream of pure crack cocaine. Now, I’ve done that before with other books (Hunger Games comes to mind as adding to my particular antisocial behavior in a 24 hour period) but this book wasn’t on par with Hunger Games. There’s conflict but it isn’t life or death. The world isn’t particularly new and while it IS paranormal, that aspect doesn’t play into the story as much.

So why did I inhale it so quickly? Two reasons: character and structure.

The main character is named Nora. How often do you meet a YA heroine with the particularly ‘bland’ name of Nora. And yet it was her name that first game me the clue she was going to be a character worth getting to know. Naming a character is so important and so hard to do. What route will you take? What preconceived notions do you bring to that name? I loved that her name was Nora because it perfectly embodied a character who was just trying to live life. She didn’t ask for adventure, wasn’t clingy (in the first book), wasn’t even completely aware of what was truly going on half the time (sounds like my life.) The best part? She wasn’t neurotic. Nora was completely believable and I found myself wanting to read more just so I could hang out with her.

Now, this was the first time I TRULY paid attention to the structure of a YA book and I really do think a solid structure made this 400 page book such a quick read. Everything was evenly paced, the rising action and the major points struck and struck well because they were perfectly placed. And really, it was a simple story. My biggest problem is that I try and juggle 25 things at a time in a story and that doesn’t even make for a good story. It makes for a confusing story that doesn’t hold anyone’s attention.

My one qualm? For a while now I’ve been asking that one obnoxious question the whole world spends a great deal of time trying to answer, “What’s the point?” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the story. But why did Fitzpatrick write this? What does it teach? Really – she doesn’t have to have a reason and it doesn’t have to teach anything. This doesn’t actually have anything to do with her as a writer or a person, just me working through my own demons. Because we as a society depend so much on stories. Whether we mean to or not, there’s a message between each cover.

What message am I going to share? More importantly, HOW?

That’s it for now. It was kind of a weird morning (I happen to be writing this to get it out of the way.) The upstairs neighbors kicked out one of the occupants so it’s been interesting.

I’m going to post this before I’ve finished everything, on faith that I’ll get it all done today – don’t know when but I’ll figure that out. OH. AND NO REWARD TODAY BECAUSE SMASH ISN’T EVEN ON.

It’s been a really weird day.

– Megh

PS. The link for more from Becca Fitzpatrick: beccafitzpatrick.com. You should check her out, she’s pretty great.