My A - Z of Books

I first saw this post over at Shelley Wilson and I thought this would be a lot of fun to do. (I have tried to find the original post but haven't yet, I will post a link when I find it). It's basically a get to know you through your a - z of books. Hopefully you think it's as fun as I did and if you fancy doing this too, please tag me or link me to your answers so I can check them out.

Author you've read the most books from

That will be either Terry Pratchett or Richard Laymon. I adore Terry Pratchett's work and Richard Laymon was my husband's favourite author when we first met so I read through all the books he owned.

Best sequel ever

I think this has to be Half Wild by Sally Green (I haven't read Half Lost yet as I know it will give me all the feels).

Currently reading

I'm currently reading a few books. Half Truths: A Half Bad Story by Sally Green, City Of Glass by Cassandra Clare, The Warren Commission Report: The Official Report On The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy by the President's Commission and I'm buddy reading the Iliad by Homer with two lovely ladies.

Drink of choice while reading

You can't beat a good cup of tea. It's pretty much the only thing I drink except water. Fun bonus fact -  I only drink coffee on train stations.

E - reader or physical book

100% Physical books. I did finally cave and get a Kindle towards the end of last year, but though it is useful, it will never feel quite the same as having a real book in my hands and being able to turn pages and use a bookmark.

Fictional Character you would probably have dated in high school

Jace Wayland, he's a complete jerk  but good looking and sadly I know on more than one occasion I chose the "bad boy" over the far better choice.

Glad you gave this book a chance

I am definitely glad that I gave Saga a chance, I was put off by the hype and I really didn't think it would be for me at all, but I absolutely love it.

Hidden Gem book

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch. I read this book years ago and I still think about it now, I definitely think I'll need to re read it at some point very soon.

Important moment in your reading life

I can't really think of something too specific, but I guess discovering the online book world such as booktube, book blogging, Goodreads etc. I found people to share my love of books with.

Just finished

The last three books I finished were The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett, Anything For Her by Jack Jordan and City Of Ashes by Cassandra Clare.

Kind of books you will not read

I'm really not a fan of contemporary (unless its a crime novel, that kind of contemporary is fine), when I read I use it to escape into another world and so I don't want to read about every day things,

Longest book you've read

So far it's War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy at 1444 pages.

Major book hangover

When I finished the Divergent series (Including Four) I didn't know what to do with myself for days as I'd binge read the books and I'd never done that before.

Number of bookcases you own

At the moment we have seven bookcases, but we are in urgent need of more as we have books piling up waiting to be shelved.

One book you've read multiple times

There's very few books that I have re read because I always want to read something new, but one of the ones I have re read is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Preferred place to read

Either curled up on the sofa or tucked up in bed.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you've read

"There's nothing like the smell of old books. They smell like memories" - Yonder (A Southern Haunting #1) by LeeAnne Hansen

Reading regret

I really regret that I haven't got a record of all the books I have read in my life from being a child. Even if I'd started a book journal as a teenager or something like that; I would be better, but I only really thought about it when I discovered Goodreads. I have already set up Goodreads accounts for both Nerdlings so that they don't have that regret (If it's not something they want when they're old enough to choose that would be absolutely fine by me, but at least this gives them the option).

Series you started and need to finish!

The Throne of Glass Series, The Mortal Instruments, The Lunar Chronicles...it goes on, I need to work on that.

Three of your all-time favourite books

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub and The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.

Unapologetic fangirl for

The Half Bad trilogy by Sally Green!

Very excited for this release more than all others

The follow up to the Six Of Crows, Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. I have no words for how excited I am!

Worst bookish habit

I cannot give up on a book, I really need to learn how to stop when I'm not enjoying a book as there are just so many books I want to read.

X marks the spot - Start on the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book

The Animals Of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann (I picked the bookshelf closest to me so I didn't have to get up).

Your latest purchase

My most recent purchase was an Amazon order and I got The 10th Anniversary Life and Death edition of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and 6 of the penguin little black books, The Communist Manifesto, Sinbad The Sailor, The Figure In The Carpet, The Old Man Of The Moon, The Terrors Of The Night and Goblin Market.

Zzzzz snatcher book - Last book that kept you up way too late

It was Anything For Her by Jack Jordan (watch out for a review coming soon as part of the blog tour), I just needed to know what happened.

So there you have all my answers, what do you think? Have you read any of the books I mentioned?

Finish It Feb 2016

Hello! I'll start off by apologising for such a long gap between blogs. I got hit by the flu quite badly and I just haven't been up to much at all recently, but fingers crossed I'm finally getting my energy back to get stuff done and I can go back to my regular posts, I've a couple of reviews coming up and I'm part of an exciting blog tour in February.

Anyhoo, though as of yet I'm not participating in any specific challenges this year, I have decided to take part in Finish It Feb where you concentrate on finishing books you're half way through or finishing off series that you're part way through reading. It's being hosted by Faye over at A Daydreamer's Thoughts.

I do have a lot going on in February with reviews and blog tours etc but I am planning on trying to read some more books in series that I have started but haven't got through yet. I have a ridiculous amount of series that I have started and then I've been distracted by starting reading another series and I'd just like to at least get to the stage where I've read the books in the series that I own.

I feel this challenge will work well for me as I have a nice variety of books and genres to choose from so I should be able to match my reading mood without feeling restricted. I will be posting a picture of the books I have chosen to pick from for the month on my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook on Monday and I'll also update this blog with the list too at that time, so keep your eye out for all of those! At the end of February I'll do a wrap up of how I managed and if I got any completed.

I'm really looking forward to all the exciting things coming to my blog over the next couple of months and I really hope you enjoy them too.

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So the complete list that I have to choose from are:

Cress by Marissa Meyer
The Kill Order by James Dashner
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas
The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J Maas
Clariel by Garth Nix
A Dance With Dragons: After the Feast by George R.R. Martin
I Am Dead by Gareth Wiles
Icon's Request by Gareth Wiles
A Matter of Dark by Gareth Wiles
Where the Birds Hide at Night by Gareth Wiles
Death Note: Black Edition, Vol. 4 by Tsugumi Ohba

As I said a nice varied selection to choose from! Here's hoping that I can get through a good chunk of them. I've linked each on to their Goodreads page so if you want to check any of them out you can do.

It's a kind of magic - My review of The Tales of Beedle the Bard

The last book I read before making my decision about giving up my 2015 Reading Challenge was for the Popsugar reading challenge for the "a book with magic" topic and the book I had chosen was The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. I chose this book as though I have read all the Harry Potter books I had never got around to reading this and thought that this would be the perfect opportunity.

I'll own up to the fact I generally dislike reading introductions to books and for the most part I skip them or just skim read for the important information, but as this book was so short I figured I would read the whole thing, I'm glad I did as I really enjoyed the explanation of the similarities and differences between muggle and magical fairy tales.

I enjoyed each tale for its own merits and I liked the fact that they were similar to Grimm's fairy tales as I re read the whole collection in the past year. I think my favourite was either the The Warlock's Hairy Heart for its Edgar Allen Poe feel to it or The Fountain of Fair Fortune for the moral it tells.

Personally I don't feel the notes from Dumbledor add anything to the tales at all and I could have done without these and had another couple of tales instead. I did however like the likeness that Beedle the Bard is supposed to be a magical Brothers Grimm writer, whereas Beatrix Bloxam is the magical Disney retelling stories without any of the darkness and filling them with sweetness and light,

Overall this is a very nice book and it was all for charity so definitely a worthwhile read, but for me it was just very average and didn't capture the same of magic that we all know and love in the Harry Potter series.

I started reading this book on the 10th of October 2015 and finished it on the 11th October 2015
I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads

An Update on my 2015 Reading Challenge

At the beginning of the year I decided that I was going to participate in both the Book Riot Read Harder challenge and the PopSugar Ultimate Reading challenge as I believed that it would widen my horizons and book choices. I made a list of all the books I wanted to read to accomplish this and spent time considering what would be the best choices for me.

I was really excited by the whole thing and at the start I flew through quite a few of the books on my list, but as I got further into the year, I just wasn't in the mood to read the choices of books that I had made so I changed up some of my original choices with books that I did want to read but that still fit the challenge criteria. As more time went on the books I wanted to read no longer fit under any of the criteria to fit on my challenge list and I started to begrudge reading any of them, even though I do want to read them all, just not at this point in time. Because of this I went into a reading slump for a couple of months which was tough to get through.

So I've made a decision, I'm not going to be completing my 2015 Reading Challenge that I set for myself, I have hit my target of how many books I wanted to read this year (100) and I have thoroughly enjoyed, for the most part, the books I have read. I'm doing this so that I can carry on enjoying my reading experience which is the most important thing to me. I have found that this sort of challenge just doesn't work for me as I found it very restrictive, which is the complete opposite of the reason I was doing it in the first place. This is also the reason that I don't set monthly tbr lists as I never know what genre I'm going to be in the mood for. I do still think that it's a great way for people to expand their reading experience it is just not for me.

If I do read any books that fit in before the end of the year, I'll definitely still blog about them and update my list, but if not, I really don't mind. If you'd like to see how I did, click here for my original 2015 Reading Challenge post.

Have you ever participated in a reading challenge? How did you find it?

My Review of You

I'm really trying hard to work on my 2015 reading challenge as I'm really far behind on it and I still want to fully complete it by year end. This is meaning that I'm changing up some of the choices I made at the beginning of the year so that the books fit into the current genre mood I'm in. Overall I'm only 4 books off hitting the amount of books I'd set myself to read this year (I wanted to read 100 books) but out of those only 21 of them are from the 70 books for the challenge.

The book I chose for "a book with a one word title" was You by Caroline Kepnes. I was really excited to see this in The Works in their 3 books for £5 offer as I had heard so many good things about it and the whole concept sounded really new and interesting, getting a view from the eyes of the stalker rather than the stalkee. There are some very minor spoilers ahead, but if you've read anything about this book, you'll probably already know.

The start of the book was fantastic, I felt incredibly uncomfortable reading from Joe's perspective and the things going through his mind. The language used was so far from what I would use or hear, especially when the C-word was dropped in the first few pages or so. My hubby kept asking if I was enjoying the book and all I could say was "I don't know" the main character gave me the creeps and I didn't like being in his head but obviously that meant that Kepnes had done a brilliant job of portraying Joe. The book is exceptionally well written and it was definitely a unique way of telling this kind of story.

All of the characters in this book are absolutely awful human beings (apart from Ethan but we barely see him) and they have no redeeming qualities. Joe is awful for obvious reasons. Guinevere or Beck is a selfish, flaky and entitled brat. As for Beck's friends, each one is worse than the last. I know a few people who have read this have felt sorry for Joe and want him to succeed, this isn't my opinion but I certainly understand why they would feel like that with all the people he meets.

I got around half way through the book and I started to think the story started to lose credibility and believability, The story to begin with, was very creepy and made you seriously look at the mark you are leaving online that makes it so easy for the wrong people to find out everything about you. When Joe began on his kidnapping and murderous ways (also finding out about previous murders) it just lost the magic that had been created and just no longer captured my imagination the same way it had to start with.

Sadly the book ended up falling flat for me and it just wasn't what I had expected or wanted. I have since finishing the book found out that this isn't a stand alone which I feel takes away from the uniqueness even more, however being a completionist if I see the next book/books I will probably pick them up, just to see where this story can be taken as I feel everything has already been covered. I would love to be proven wrong and for me to get the experience that I wanted out of You from the next book (Hidden Bodies).

Overall a brilliantly written piece that in my opinion is let down by the story told.

I started reading this book on the 30th of August 2015 and finished it on the 2nd of September 2015
I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads

Red Blooded - My Review of Red Queen

The book I have ended up reading for the Popsugar challenge of "a book with a colour in the title" was a book that I hadn't planned on reading at all due to hearing so many mixed reviews and that book is Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. I was in Waterstones with my husband and they had their buy one get one half price offer on and he suggested I pick up this and another. (I also picked up The Kill Order by James Dashner, yes I'm a sucker for punishment)

I've heard a lot of people saying that this book is just a combination of everyone's favourite dystopian novels and yes as you read through you can see comparisons to other books such as the Hunger Games etc but that doesn't change the fact that the book is well written and a very enjoyable read.

I really liked all of the characters both main and peripheral, everyone had a personality and a place where they fit into the story. I enjoyed the mess that was the love interest in the story, it made a nice change from a straight forward love triangle and I still am not 100% sure who I'm rooting for, which normally by now I would have definitely decided on who I'd like the main character to be with (if anyone).

Though the story isn't unique, I thought it was really interesting and I'm looking forward to learning more about the world and the people in it. I also thought the betrayal and twist was done incredibly well, sadly I'd been spoilt as to the fact that there was a twist but luckily not what the actual twist was. Even though I knew it was coming I was still really shocked as I couldn't make up my mind who would be the betrayer and what would come from it.

I thought the story was paced well and built up to all the action at the end of the book which has left a perfect opening for the next instalment in this series (trilogy?)

Though it was not the book I set out to read, I'm very glad that I did and I will be recommending it to other people and picking up the next book.

I started reading this book on the 27th of August 2015 and finished reading it on the 30th of August 2015.
I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads

August 2015 Book Round Up

After a bit of a reading slump, I am slowly getting back into my reading groove. After reading the Gone series and it being so intense I've been reading a lot of quick easy reads to break myself into things but by the end of the month I was ready for more.

Book 1 - Wolverine MAX, Vol. 1: Permanent Rage by Jason Starr - 4.5 Stars
Book 2 - Batman Incorporated, Vol 1: Demon Star by Grant Morrison - 2.5 Stars
Book 3 - Ms Marvel, Vol.1 No Normal by G. Willow Wilson - 3 Stars
Book 4 - Fear by Michael Grant - 5 Stars
Book 5 - Light by Michael Grant - 5 Stars
Book 6 - Elektra, Vol. 1: Bloodlines by W. Haden Blackman - 5 Stars
Book 7 - A Night In Terror Tower by R.L. Stine - 4 Stars
Book 8 - Fright Camp by R.L. Stine - 4 Stars
Book 9 - The Unexpected Occurrence Of Thaddeus Hobble - 4 Stars
Book 10 - Batman Adventures Vol. 1 by Kelley Puckett - 5 Stars
Book 11 - Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime by Val McDermid - 5 Stars
Book 12 - Rogues Revenge by Geoff Johns - 3 Stars
Book 13 - X-Men: Wolverine/Gambit by Jeph Loeb - 4 Stars
Book 14 - Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard - 5 Stars

I'm thinking about trying a different format of how I do my round ups at the end of next month to make this a little more interesting. If there's anything specific you'd like to see, like recommendations or synopsis of the books, please let me know.

My Review of The Assassin Princess

I originally had a different book chosen for the Book Riot topic of "a book published by an indie press", but then I was lucky enough to win a signed copy of The Assassin Princess by Blake Rivers on Facebook directly from the author and thought that it would be a perfect choice for me.

I'd read the blurb and I'd read the Goodreads description as I'd been coveting the book for a while and it sounded really interesting so I was really excited to read it. It was everything I expected and more!

The world building is brilliant and I absolutely adore Legacy, the Planrus Lands etc. They are described just enough for you to picture them yourself but with enough detail so you have a complete picture, The lore and the history that you learn as you travel through the book is incredibly interesting and going forward I would love to read more about it, it's just so well thought out and credible. The magic is also very cleverly done with where it comes from and how it is used, I don't want to go into it too much as I don't want to ruin the wonder of anyone coming to read this book.

The main three characters are Ami, Adam and Hero. Ami is exactly the right kind of badass female main protagonist that you want in a story, Adam is exactly the right kind of twisted evil you want in a story and Hero is the perfect damaged hero you want in a story. I genuinely think the characterisation has been done so well and not only for the main characters, I love the story about Ami's parents and I love the unicorns (yes there are unicorns in this book!)

I'd say the only criticism I have about this is that I don't have the next book in the series so I cannot just jump straight back into the world.

Just a mention about the front cover too, it's stunning and eye catching. So simple and yet striking.

Overall a fantastic book that throws you straight into the action and keeps you going right until the very end. People need to read this book.

I started this book on the 16th of July 2015 and finished it on the 25th of July 2015
I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads

July 2015 Book Round Up

This month I have continued with my slump! I really need to get back into reading more again so I can power through the rest of my 2015 reading challenge. I am determined to complete it before year end. Anyone who has tips to kick a reading slump, please let me know! Anyway onto the books -

Book 1 - Plague by Michael Grant - 4.5 Stars
Book 2 - The Death Cure by James Dashner - 2 Stars
Book 3 - Grey by E L James - 3 Stars
Book 4 - The Art of War by Sun Tzu - 3 Stars
Book 5 - Ultimate Comics Ultimates: Disassembled by Joshua Hale Fialkov - 3 Stars
Book 6 - Red Robin, Volume 2: Collision by Christopher Yost - 5 Stars
Book 7 - Batman: Gordon of Gotham by Dennis O'Neil - 4 Stars
Book 8 - The Assassin Princess by Blake Rivers - 4.5 Stars
Book 9 - Grimm' Fairy Tales: The Complete Collection by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, interpreted by Margaret Hunt - 5 Stars

And that's it. Fingers crossed for more books and reviews in August.

Make Love Not War - My Review of The Art of War

I'm really trying to cut down the amount of books left on my 2015 Reading Challenge and I decided to chose one that was a topic on both the PopSugar and Book Riot challenges and that was "a book that was originally written in a different language". The book I chose was one that has been on my owned tbr for a long time and the book was The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

The Art of War was originally written in Chinese and the copy I read was in English. The book took me just over an hour to read and was surprisingly easy to read. I expected a lot more detail and more indepth descriptions. The writing style was almost lyrical or like poetry and so that was how I read it in my mind.

I don't really know how to review this book as it is so different to everything I normally read. Yes I feel it is an important book and I am glad that I read it. As to whether I think it is still relevant, maybe. Some people say that you can relate certain things to your work life instead of war, but I'm not entirely certain that it would be necessary.

I know this is short and sweet but I really don't have a lot to say about this book

I read this book on the 12th of July
I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads

How Not to End a Trilogy - My Review of The Death Cure (Contains spoilers, many spoilers)

The Death Cure by James Dashner is the third and final book in my 2015 Reading Challenge for the PopSugar topic of a "trilogy" and oh boy was I disappointed.

The first two books in this trilogy, though they had their faults, kept me interested and I liked the characters and I really wanted to know what was going on. I continued reading on the promise that everything would be explained and we would understand what was happening.

I'm annoyed at myself while writing this review as I normally take notes as I read, but for some unknown reason I didn't for this book and so all my thoughts are disjointed and I'm trying to get them straight so I can explain my feelings. I apologise for things being out of order and slightly jumbled.

I'll start with the characters, all of them, yes ALL OF THEM have lost any personality that they had and any character development that had been going on in previous books just comes to a grinding halt from page one of the Death Cure. One of the worst casualties of this is Theresa, in The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials I thought she was very interesting and I was looking forward to learning more about hers and Thomas' relationship. I thought in this book she would be given the chance to redeem herself for the things she had to do in the past and would come out stronger and more badass than before, but no, there was nothing except bits making her sound awful and then she's killed off in one sentence and no one even really cares. She's actually barely in the book at all. I also grow to dislike Brenda and Jorge after liking them before, Brenda is used as a way to progress the plot and Jorge is just a peripheral character all of a sudden, Also I must have been really confused in The Scorch Trials because I thought that Jorge was the same age-ish as the rest of the characters but in this book his relationship with Brenda is described as Uncle and Niece? It could just be me who totally missed something but that was the impression I was under.

Onto Thomas our main protagonist, he has spent the last two books bemoaning the loss of his memory and being determined to get it back no matter what. So when he's offered the chance to get his memory back, what do you think he does, yep he doesn't do it!! And for what reason? Oh because it's a scary looking machine. Seriously after everything they've been through and dealt with, he can't bear two minutes of discomfort to get what he has wanted all this time. This now means that not only does he not get any memories, but we as readers get no answers bar the tiny bits of dream memories that are thrown in every now and again. This made me really angry as this was the great reveal I'd been waiting for and it was taken away from me!

The story in this book also seems all over the place. There is a whole lot of action but nothing really happens. Dashner brings in  this Right Arm movement people and then doesn't really do anything at all with them except use them to create drama in the final scenes. I also wondered why the book became a zombie apocalypse survival story, I understand it was people beyond "the gone" but it just became one fight/escape after another, Oooh and another thing, where was Dashner going with the whole the group being followed in Denver and all the streets being quiet and then,...what? Was he going somewhere with it and then forgot about it? It feels like a whole heap of different ideas he had which he started but then never followed through to completion.

Another part of the story which baffled me was the introduction by Brenda that this Chancellor Paige was super important and we should look out for her, there are posters of her face everywhere etc and then all we get is that she came in while Thomas was unconscious and leaves a note for him. We don't even get to meet her and I was waiting from the moment Brenda mentioned her for her to appear somewhere. And then right at the end we get an email from her explaining the happy ending that we got (yes it was a happily ever after, well for the munies anyway) that it was all WICKED's fault anyway releasing the Flare. This would have made an excellent plot point DURING the story, not as an after thought at the end.

One final piece of the story I want to mention is the storyline with Newt. I feel if Thomas had read the letter at an appropriate point and followed through with Newt's request, then Newt's death would have been a lot more emotional and I would have been genuinely upset as I had previously enjoyed Newt as a character. As it was though, it just felt kind of shoehorned in and like I said, that Dashner had started a plot line and then totally forgotten about it.

Overall this book was extremely frustrating and very unsatisfying. I had enjoyed the trilogy up to this point and then the ending has left me disappointed. I probably will pick up the Kill Order at some point purely because I'm a completionist, but I will get it from the library or something rather than buying it. I would recommend reading The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials and then just making up your own ending as I think you'd probably do a better job yourself.

I started this book on the 4th of July 2015 and I finished it on the 6th of July
I did originally give this book 3 stars on Goodreads, but while writing this review I have amended that to 2 stars

June 2015 Book Round Up

I started the beginning of June with a serious case of reading slump and I didn't read for days as I just didn't know what I was in the mood for. I then decided that I really wanted to read some manga but it seems I've exhausted my local libraries supply and there was only one that I hadn't read, so I ended up with a few graphic novels/trade paper backs as an alternative.

Book 1 - The Borrowers by Mary Norton - 3 Stars
Book 2 - Batman: A Death In The Family by Jim Starlin - 5 Stars
Book 3 - X-Men and Power Pack: The Power of X by Marc Sumerak - 3 Stars
Book 4 - Animal Academy: Hakobune Hakusho Volume 1 Moyamu Fujino - 2 Stars
Book 5 - Hunger by Michael Grant - 5 Stars
Book 6 - Lies by Michael Grant - 5 Stars
Book 7 - Captain Atom, Volume 1: Evolution by J.T. Krul - 4 Stars
Book 8 - Justice League Beyond: In Gods we Trust by Derek Fridolfs - 4 Stars
Book 9 - Uncanny X-Men: Sisterhood by Matt Fraction - 3.5 Stars
Book 10 - Batman: Gotham by Gaslight by Brian Augustyn - 5 Stars
Book 11 - Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman - 5 Stars
Book 12 - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - 1 Stars

Not a bad month, though I really need to get back into it as that last book has put me back into a slump! What's everyone else been reading this month?

My Review of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

For the PopSugar topic of "a book that makes you cry," I added  book that I have wanted to read for a long time, but just have never seemed to have gotten around to. The book I chose was The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.

I'm not entirely sure where to start with my review, but I'll start by being honest and admitting that I hated this book. Hopefully I will be able to coherently explain as to why.

The first few pages of the book I found the writing style to be extremely strange and it took me a while to get into the flow of how Boyne wrote. I also found a lot of the metaphors and similes extremely odd, for example on page 7 we had this simile " 'Say Goodbye to them?' he repeated, spluttering out the words as if his mouth was full of biscuits that he'd munched into tiny pieces but not actually swallowed yet."  To me that just seems really long winded and awkward.

SO MUCH REPETITION

The descriptions of some of the characters physical actions are also odd, the fact that Bruno (who is 9) feels his arms stretching out at his sides in surprise, is something that my toddler does when he's surprised or excited. A child of 9 would have grown out of this a long time ago. Also the amount of people whose mouth formed the shape of a O is quite ridiculous. There are so many better ways of describing this facial expression such as " his jaw dropped in surprise," "her mouth was agape" I could go on, but you get the picture.

SO MUCH REPETITION

Another thing I found infuriating was Bruno's mispronunciation of Auschwitz and Fuhrer. It felt as though Boyne was just trying to avoid actually using the words in his book. It is just plain unbelievable that a child of one of Hitler's top men would be allowed to go on in this manner, oh and don't let me forget that he believes that saluting and saying "heil Hitler" is a way of saying "goodbye and I hope you have a nice day".....yeah....oh, oh and a high ranking Commandant's son that does not know what or rather who a Jew is. I do understand that a lot of people at the time were sadly unaware of what was happening around them, but as someone who is living right next to Auschwitz and who is surrounded by soldiers, it just seems unbelievable in my opinion that Bruno would know so little. My feelings are that Boyne used this time period and the atrocities that happened to write his "fable" but was then too scared to actually use any form of correct representation of what was actually going on.

SO MUCH REPETITION

As children of a Commandant, there is no way they would have been allowed to have been out of education for even a short amount of time or some form or military style training. By 1943 (which is the year I'm guessing this is set in due to Bruno being 9 and born in 1934) the Hitler Youth and the subdivisions were recruiting children as young as 10, so though Bruno wasn't quite old enough, he would have being prepared for it and Gretel would definitely have gone as I believe only 10 or 20% of German youths avoided being drafted.

SO MUCH REPETITION (is it annoying yet)

I felt that the children were portrayed in such a way that they appeared much younger than any child, especially in a time of war, would seem. Children are extremely intelligent and know a lot more than any adult would like to think. Their characters just didn't seem to fit the ages that were given as 9 and 12, I don't feel that Boyne can write children very well at all, the way they talk, think and act just don't seem natural.

SO MUCH REPETITION

And we come to the ending, if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading here...Ok the ending for me came completely out of nowhere and was surprising, however I am apparently the only person who hadn't been spoiled for the ending as even my husband knew what happened and he has neither read the book or seen the film. I did not cry at the tragic end as I'd not felt any connection to any of the characters and I felt that though yes you should definitely mourn the loss of one boy, the book almost sidelines the fact that millions of people died. Even the final sentences were kind of insulting "Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

Did I mention - SO MUCH REPETITION (Ok I'll stop now)

The only part of the book that I actually found quite interesting was the implied affair between Bruno's Mother (who was never even given a name) and Lieutenant Kotler. But we never really get anything in a way of payoff as we're following the story through the eyes of a child. All that happens is that Kotler is sent away, whereas I would have thought he would have suffered an "accident" but maybe that's just me.

I do kind of feel that I am cheating using this book as the one that made me cry as it did not. I am going to stand by it as I could cry with anger and frustration at how history has been used to produce this book. There are even now more things that I could comment on (the fence not being electrified, no guard patrols, a child in Auschwitz being able to sit around all afternoon without anyone noticing, the fact that that child was alive, the fact there was a way under the fence and not one person tried to escape) about how much I dislike this book, but have chosen to only include the most prevalent in my mind while writing this.

I originally gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads, just due to the surprise ending (for me) and then I dropped it to 1.5 and now as I've been writing my review I have decided it is only a 1 star.
I started reading this book on the 23rd of June 2015 and finished it on the 26th of June 2015

Can I Borrow a Feeling - My Review of The Borrowers

Back to PopSugar for this reading choice, and I opted for "a book my mum loved" It took a good while for her to decide what she would suggest., but her final decision was to suggest The Borrowers by Mary Norton which made me really happy as it was a book I loved as a child, so off I went to borrow it from my local library.

The book started off extremely slow and I found it very hard to get into, I kept putting it down and finding pretty much anything else that I could do instead of finish reading it. Sadly I think the book has aged badly due to it's casual mentioning of smacking children and being firm handed with your wife, The idea of the story itself is brilliant and with the amount of things I put down which disappear, I'm inclined to believe in Borrowers.

When Arrietty meets the boy, some of the magic I remembered came back into the story and it seemed to pick up the pace of the story as before she was "seen" the story was just meandering along with no real purpose or destination.

I think my favourite part of the book was in the back, where there were loads of quizzes and activities to do once you had finished reading. One of the activities was to draw your own Borrower family and make up a story around them which I think is a fantastic idea.

I started this book on the 19th of May 2015 and I finished reading it on the 6th of June 2015
I gave this book 3 Stars on Goodreads

Cyborgs, Princesses and Fairy Tales Oh My! - My Review of Cinder

I've been doing a lot of the PopSugar categories recently so I thought it was about time to get into some of the Book Riot Read Harder challenge categories. I chose "a book that is a retelling of a classic story" and the book I chose was Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

I will hold my hands up and confess that before reading this book, I really thought I was going to hate it. I don't like cyborgs and I'm pretty sure this is the first retelling book I've ever read so I did not know what to expect and I had made a judgement before I even started.

The writing throughout Cinder is fantastic and Meyer has created a world and characters that you can instantly recognise and relate to. I absolutely adore the characters of Cinder, Iko and Kai and in complete contrast I absolutely hate Queen Levana with a passion, though I think there's more to her character which I'm looking forward to hopefully finding more about in one of the other books.

I really enjoyed the fact that we had a bit of back story for the prince in this story too as I sometimes feel we get the princesses story and then prince charming just rocks up to save the day without us knowing much about him (this isn't true for all fairy tales, just some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head).

I loved this book and was gob smacked it ended when it did, I don't have the next book and I NEED to know what happens next.

The only...not negative but something I want to point out is that I figured out pretty much on page one who Princess Selene was, to be honest though surely everyone must have known. Am I right?

I started this book on the 23rd of May 2015 and I finished reading it on the 24th of May 2015
I gave this book 5 Stars on Goodreads

Hot! Hot! Hot! - My Review of The Scorch Trials

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner is the 2nd instalment of my choice for the PopSugar "trilogy" category. There was nearly a month between me reading this and The Maze Runner, but the story was still really clear in my mind and I knew exactly where the story had left off which is a good sign that I had really enjoyed the book.

I feel like I've said it a lot recently but this book definitely got start with a bang, Dashner does an amazing job of creating the feeling of confusion and fear with the fast paced and bizarre goings on. You feel alongside the characters and need to keep reading to find out what on earth is going on.

With how much was happening, I got around 50% through the book and I needed a break, I was just so tired with all the adrenaline rushes. After I got past this though, I flew through the second half of the book and I'm really looking forward to finding out, hopefully, how these trials are helping design a cure for anything or how it will help save the world putting children through so much trauma in the final book.

I did enjoy the addition of the new characters Brenda and Jorge though I wasn't sure about them at first, I really grew to like both of them. I do feel really sorry though for all the peripheral characters that survived the Maze, that we never even learn their names and they keep getting killed off like red shirts in Star Trek.

I'm going to have another small break before reading the final book in this trilogy (eventually I am planning on getting the prequel and reading that too), but I really can't wait to continue the journey with Thomas and the gang.

I started reading this book on the 20th of May 2015 and I finished it on the 23rd of May 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

May 2015 Book Round Up

I said earlier this year that I would start to do a round up of the books I'd read each month as I was only blogging reviews of books on my reading challenges and I have finally got organised enough to be able to do it! Yay! These are the books I've read during May with the rating I gave them on Goodreads.

Book 1 - Half Bad by Sally Green  - 4 Stars
Book 2 - Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher - 5 Stars
Book 3 - Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth - 5 Stars
Book 4 - Superman: He'l On Earth by Scott Lobdell - 5 Stars
Book 5 - Superman: Godfall by Michael Lane Turner - 3 Stars
Book 6 - Gone by Michael Grant - 4 Stars
Book 7 - The Scorch Trials by James Dashner - 4 Star
Book 8 - Cinder by Marissa Meyer - 5 Stars
Book 9 - Half Wild by Sally Green - 5 Stars

9 Books, not a bad month if I do say so myself. Currently I am 52% the way through my reading goal of 100 books this year and I am 11 books ahead of schedule according to my Goodreads reading challenge counter thingy. I am however really slacking in my 2015 Reading Challenge, my Classics Challenge (though to be fair this is a 5 year target) and my Panels Challenge, I really need to make more of an effort to start ticking books off my lists.

My Review of The Maze Runner

My original choice for PopSugar's reading challenge category "a trilogy" was the Bourne Identity, I have owned the books for years and have only watched the 1st movie (which I wasn't overly enthralled with) and thought now was a perfect time to read it. As I've got more into my challenge, I have decided they are just not what I fancy and I didn't want to get myself into a reading slump by reading something I wasn't interested in. So I decided to choose something a little more fast paced and something I wanted to read and that was The Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner, the first book being The Maze Runner.

I'll start by saying that I'm not really sure why everyone seems to think that this book starts off slow, I think it starts off great and just keeps going. There is pretty much action from page one and it just builds from there.

James Dashner has done some excellent things in this book, the memory erasure was extremely well thought out and explained really well, he creates an incredibly creepy feeling during the book with the maze and the artificial environment. Did I mention how horrendous the Grievers sounded?! Urgh! One thing that really irritated me throughout the book was the weird slang that the boys used, I really didn't feel there was any need for it at all as they all knew the correct words and slang for what they were saying. To me it feels like Dashner came up with this language at some point in the past and wanted to use it in one of his books.

I did very much enjoy this book and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy (though I've now found out that there is a prequel? I'm not counting that though I will probably still read it). As much as I did enjoy it though, I felt like there was something missing and I could happily put the book down and not be constantly wondering when the next time I could pick it up would be, not enough to make me dislike it, just enough to make me like it less than other books I have read recently.

I started reading this book on the 17th of April 2015 and finished reading it on the 25th of April 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

Things that go bump in the night - My review of The Haunting of Hill House

I took my time choosing the book for the PopSugar challenge topic "a book that scares you" as I wanted something scary, but not too scary, because as I've got older, I just can't deal with horror the way I used to be able to and now pretty much everything terrifies me. I decided on a classic that sounded more psychological than outright horror and it's one I have wanted to read for a long time, the book I chose was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. There will be a spoiler in this review, so you have been fairly warned.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the writing, it seemed slightly "off" to me. The book was written/published in 1959 and yet the writing seemed to try and make it feel like it was written a lot earlier than that. Once I got into it though, I got used to how it sounded and it felt natural.

The story itself took almost half the book to get started, but I did enjoy the character building with Eleanor. I absolutely love how Eleanor made stories in her head about things that she saw as she was driving along as I do the same thing when I'm out and about. Something I didn't like was the conversations between the guests at the house, I know it was written in a different time, but seriously who has conversations like these people do? All the make believe and non sensical stuff at times took away from the story and I found I didn't really follow what they were talking about.

This bit contains the spoiler. After finishing the book, there are a few things I'm still unsure about so if you can answer any of them or have your own thoughts please let me know! I'm not 100% sure whether there actually was any paranormal activity or whether it was just fear creating fear. And finally the ending left me confused, did Eleanor really exist? Did she kill herself? What happened?

Overall though I enjoyed this book and I'm glad that I got around to reading it.

I started reading this book on the 2nd of April 2015 and finished reading it on the 4th of April 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

My Review of Throne of Glass

I'm currently trying to make a concerted effort to read my 2015 Reading challenge books as I'm actually finding it quite restrictive even though I thought it would help widen my horizons with genre, content and authors etc. I think next year, I may come up with my own challenge which will allow me a lot more freedom, but we'll see how things go.

Anyhoo, onto my review of Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas, which I chose for the topic "a book with a love triangle" for the PopSugar part of my reading challenge.

The story certainly gets right into it from page one, so it grips you from the get go and you want to carry on reading to find out what is happening. I felt that the world was really well built and I could picture each place perfectly in my head with the descriptions given. I do feel though that you could tell at times that this book was written by a younger person, not that it mattered or was in any way detrimental to the book, but I noticed it enough to feel like I should mention it.

The characters for me are great and I love the characters I'm supposed to and love to hate the characters I'm supposed to hate, which means that the author has done a good job. Having read Divergent just prior to reading this, I felt that Celeana actually seemed younger that Tris even though Celeana is 18 and Tris is only 16. I can't put my finger on why I felt this, but there was just something that made me feel that their ages were reversed.

The hints of magic throughout the book are tantalising and I can't wait to see more of it as the series continues, the story is also left at a perfect jumping off point, leaving me wanting to read more.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to continuing with the series.

I started this book on the 8th of April 2015 and I finished it on the 12th of April 2015
I gave this book 5 Stars on Goodreads