In My Mailbox (30)

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren. This week I only got 2 book but I'm glad that I at least got some books!

Bought:
The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa

For Review:
Tell Us We're Home by Marina Budhos

What did you get this week?

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

Book Blogger Hop is a fun meme hosted by Crazy For Books. Enter your link and go hop around other blogs that are out there, ready to be discovered!

I had no school this week! It feels good to have no school for the week! I did have a lot of homework so that took up some time. I saw the Harry Potter movie so I've stayed home and watched some clips of the movie!

What is your favorite book cover?

Since I have a lot I can't say just one! So here is a list of some of my favorite covers:

• Hush, Hush and Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick
• The books by Anna Godbersen-mainly because of the dresses
• The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
• Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken and
• Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead

To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can

If you're visiting, make sure you leave your link and I'll make sure to visit your blog!

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

Title: Bones of Faerie
Author: Janni Lee Simner
Published: January 2009
Pages: 256
Rating: 4/5
Summary: The war between humanity and Faerie devastated both sides. Or so 15-year-old Liza has been told. Nothing has been seen or heard from Faerie since, and Liza’s world bears the scars of its encounter with magic. Trees move with sinister intention, and the town Liza calls home is surrounded by a forest that threatens to harm all those who wander into it. Then Liza discovers she has the Faerie ability to see—into the past, into the future—and she has no choice but to flee her town. Liza’s quest will take her into Faerie and back again, and what she finds along the way may be the key to healing both worlds.

Review: At first I didn't exactly like the book but as I read more, I started to like the book more.

The story takes place in a world after the Earth has gone through some drastic changes. Liza has had to live her life without the presence of her mother. Her father treats her bad and this leads her to leave the place that has been her home. She finds herself with others from outside her town who think differently. Soon she's on a journey along with her friends to know the story behind everything.

Liza's character was something different. She had to live with her father who treated her bad and that had a bad influence in her. Once she arrives at another town, she realizes that maybe her father is even worse than she ever thought. As the story progressed I saw her character change for the better.

I thought that all the book was something interesting that was waiting to be given a chance to be read. They talked about some things that we look at and think of them as things that are ordinary and without much value. The magic that was involved in the story played a big part.

This was a fast read that I think was a great book! I guess it could fit in the dystopian genre since it takes place in a world that is unlike that in which we live in.

In My Maibox (29)

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren. This week I actually got some books!

Bought:

Provocative in Pearls by Madeline Hunter

The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox

Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte

One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

English Life in the Seventeenth Century by Roger Hart

My library had a sell and I got all of these books for only $2.50! How awesome is that?!

What did you get this week?

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

Book Blogger Hop is a fun meme hosted by Crazy For Books. Enter your link and go hop around other blogs that are out there, ready to be discovered!

This week hasn't been a very good in reading. I had lots of test and one essay so I'm blaming it on that. Thankfully next week we have no school so I'm hoping that I can get lots of reading done! And Harry Potter!! I can't wait to see the movie!!

Since Thanksgiving is coming up next week, let's use this week's Hop to share what we are most thankful for and what our holiday traditions are!

Well, I'm thankful for many things. Books of course and my family. For the awesome followers that I have. I'm sure I'm thankful for more things but I can't think of more!

I actually don't have any holiday traditions. We just go to wherever someone invites us or we just stay at home. Kind of boring but that my family. =)

To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers.

How long have you been a blogger?

I've been a blogger for about 10 months.

If you're visiting, make sure you leave your link and I'll make sure to visit your blog!

Do you love Harry Potter?

If you don't then ... I don't understand how you can possibly not like Harry Potter!! Have you ever done something crazy for the love you have to the books? You can head on over to Christina's blog Books are Life and find out what crazy things I did for Harry Potter! And if you like, you can tell me what crazy things you have done for Harry Potter! And for the record I think I would prefer seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 than going to Disneyland. I think that may be because I live so close to Disneyland but who cares. Harry Potter is awesome!!! And now I'm just going on and on about Harry Potter and honestly I think I could go like this all day long if I wanted to!

Night by Elie Weisel

Title: Night
Author: Elie Wiesel
Published: 1958
Pages: 120
Rating: 5/5
Summary: A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

Review: Knowing that this actually happened to someone makes it more real and even though I read it for school, I really enjoyed it.

At the beginning they think that nothing bad will happen to them. They say to themselves that before anything bad happens it will all be over. But as some may know this isn't the case.

Elie starts as someone who is living with his parents.He realizes that things aren't good when they come and take them away from their homes. He goes through hard things that make him question some of the things he thought he knew.

I had heard and read about the holocaust but it's nothing like reading Night. This is the story of many of those who had to go through it. Reading about how they were treated made me think of how we as humans could have done things like that.

This was a really short book that held a lot of meaning inside. I think it's one of those books that will stay with you forever and make you remember of the things that have happened in the past, both good and bad.

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

Book Blogger Hop is a fun meme hosted by Crazy For Books. Enter your link and go hop around other blogs that are out there, ready to be discovered!

This week was short for me. I only had 3 days of school! I'm hoping that the days I have no school will allow me to read all those books that need to be read.

If you find a book that looks interesting but is part of a series, do you always start with the first title?

Yes. I can't start a series in the middle. I don't exactly know why but this has actually happened to me before. It seems like I have to start from the beginning.

To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers. 

What is your usual monthly book budget?

I don't have a monthly book budget. I can't ask for more than a book per month. Sometimes I can get lucky and I will get two books, but that is only on very rare occasions.

If you're visiting, make sure you leave your link and I'll make sure to visit your blog!

Branded by Keary Taylor

Title: Branded
Series: Fall of Angels
Author: Keary Taylor
Published: March 2010
Pages: 374
Rating: 4/5
Summary: Jessica’s had the nightmares for as long as she can remember. Nightmares of being judged for people who have died, of being branded by the angels. Her friends and family think she’s a crazy because of it all. Yet she carries the mark of the condemned, seared into the back of her neck, and hides it and herself away from the world.
But when two men she can’t ignore enter her life everything changes, including the nightmares. The two of them couldn’t be more different. She will do anything to be with one of them. Even tell him the truth about angels, why she never sleeps, and the scar on the back of her neck. But one of the two has set events into motion what will puller her toward her own judgment and turn her into the object of her greatest fear.
 
Review: Right now we're seeing more books that have to do with angels. But honestly, I think that no other author portrays angels as Keary Taylor does in Branded.

The story starts off with Jessica who has had nightmares about angels that aren't just nightmares. She has to stand trial for those who have died. Through all this she meets Alex and changes her life for the better. Then her life gets even crazier than it used to be and she must figure out what is happening if she wants to save those who she loves and herself.

The life of Jessica has never been easy. Her nightmares have allowed her to need less sleep than the normal person. All of these things have made Jessica want to live far away from any place that has a lot of people. By the ending her character had change after all the she went through.

I thought that the thing about the angels and how they played a big role in the life of Jessica was really interesting. Some of the angels were good and others were bad. Then the trials change including the leader of the condemned.

This was a very interesting book. I have to say that the ending kind of took me by surprise. I know there are many books out there about angels but this is a book that others should read simply because of how the angels are played out!

I reviewed this book as part of a blog tour.

Winner!!

Rachelle H. !!

Congrats! You won Freefall by Anna Levine! I will send you an email very soon!



Author Interview: Brian Yansky

Today we have Brian Yansky, author of Alien Invasion & Other Inconveniences, stopping by!

Having lived in many places, which has been your favorite and why?

Austin is my favorite. This is a big town or a small city. About a million people live here now, but it’s still relatively easy to get around. There’s always something going on, usually many somethings. The atmosphere is laid back, but at the same time cool. There’s great music and a great literary scene. It’s a town with a distinct personality. You have to love a town whose motto is “Keep Austin Weird.”

How did the idea of writing a book about aliens come to you?

How any idea for any book comes to me is a mystery. I think most writers feel that way. Sometimes it feels as if they just fall out of the sky (Hmm. Alien telepathy?) and other times I feel like I really have to work to get them to fall out of the sky. I will say that I wanted to write an alien story that was not about the invasion itself but about what happened after the invasion. And, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, aliens are seriously underrepresented in the fictional landscape. I have nothing against vampires, zombies, wizards, unicorns, and so on but I want to give aliens a voice. LET THE ALIENS SPEAK.

Were there any authors who have influenced you other than Kurt Vonnegut?

Hundreds. Philip Pullman, Michael Chabon, John Steinbeck, John Green, Ursula LeGuin, Gabrielle Zevin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, J.D. Salinger, Anne Tyler, Pete Hautman, M.T. Anderson, Jonathan Stroud, Jane Austen, Nick Hornby, Flannery O’Conner, John Gardner, J.K. Rowling, Raymond Carver and on and on. Sometimes it’s just one novel by an author that gets me going and sometimes it’s every novel the author has written.

Do you have any must-haves when writing?

Time and coffee.

What is the most interesting or unique thing a reader has ever said to you?

People have been asking me if I believe in aliens a lot lately—oddly enough. One reader asked me if I was an alien. That was kind of interesting. What was my answer? I’ll only say this much: I was adopted by a very nice human couple.

When you were little did you ever think of becoming anything other than a writer?

Sure. I wanted to be a garbage man for a long time. You get to be outside all day and ride on the back of a truck. Then there was fireman and astronaut and mailman. I went through a period when I thought it might be nice to be President of the United States. I’m really glad I got over that. Long hours.

How did you feel when you found out you were going to be a published author?

Like my feet weren’t touching the ground. Like I was ten times larger than before I got the news. Like I wanted to say “I love you” to the world about a dozen times. It was spectacular.

What was the last book you read and loved?

I’ve really, really liked many books I’ve read this year but the last one I fell in love with was MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD by Francisco X. Stork. It is a great novel.

What do you think is the most challenging thing about writing and the easiest?

The most challenging is getting a first draft out. Those are always toughest for me. Writing a novel is a messy business. Everything is so unclear and imperfect in the first telling. It’s ugly in a way. It has no real shape and it oozes out in strange places. It’s hard to get through that first draft. The easiest thing about writing is that you get to do it at home in your pajamas. I love that.

Are there any goals you hope to accomplish in the next year?

I have a sequel to Alien Invasion & Other Inconveniences or perhaps the second novel of a trilogy—I haven’t decided. I would like to get that in good shape by the end of the year.

Where you can find more about Brian Yanksy and his book:

His website.

His blog.

Alien Invasions & Other Inconveniences by Brian Yansky

Title: Alien Invasions & Other Inconveniences
Author: Brian Yanksy
Published: October 2010
Pages:
Rating: 4/5
Summary: A polite race of telepathic killer aliens, a ten-second world conquest, and one teenage boy collide in this wry, gutsy adventure.
Jesse is in history class when a formidable, efficient race of aliens quietly takes over the earth in less time than it takes him to brush his teeth. Most humans simply fall asleep and never wake up. In moments, everyone Jesse knows and loves is gone, and he finds that he is now a slave to an inept alien leader. On the bright side, Jesse discovers he’s developing telepathic powers, and he’s not the only one. Soon he’s forging new friendships and feeling unexpectedly hopeful. When a mysterious girl appears in his dreams, talking about escaping, Jesse begins to think the aliens may not be invincible after all. But if Jesse and his friends succeed, is there anywhere left to go?
 
Review: I had never read a book about alien invasions or anything like that so I didn't really know what to expect. Having saying this, it was a really good book!
 
Jesse is in class when everything changes in 10 seconds. His classmates and mostly everyone has fallen asleep, or what looks like it. Soon he is working for the aliens that have taken over the world along with those who survived. He makes friends and they all know they must leave that place if they want to survive.
 
Jesse was a fun character. He was both serious about the things that were happening but he also made many funny comments. He didn't give up when his friends didn't believe him that they could leave and find the rebels. He kept them going even if they thought it wasn't worth it.

Reading about aliens taking over the world was something that I hadn't done before but I'm glad that I did. These aliens apologized when they killed someone. There were also some aliens that helped Jesse and his friends to get to where they wanted.

This was a really good book that at times was light to read and others it talked about some things that left you thinking. The world after the aliens came is one that I never wish to live in. I would definitively recommend this book to others!

I reviewed this book as part of a tour.

Guest Post: Keary Taylor (Branded)

Today I have the awesome Keary Taylor, author of Branded, stopping by!

What was the process of transforming the idea of terrifying angels into Branded?

Before I dive into explaining my take on the whole angel mythology, I’ll give you a little background on where the idea first formed. I was watching “The Phantom of the Opera” one night with my husband. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen the new version but I LOVE the music in it. For some reason this time as I watched it, the term “angel of music” really stuck with me. I’d first asked for the soundtrack for Christmas when I was 12, but for some reason I’d never given this term much thought. If you don’t know, Christine Daae’s (the main character) father used to tell her about the “angel of music” before he died so this was what she started calling the Phantom. But the Phantom wasn’t what you’d normally think of as an angel. He had this wretched face, he haunted the opera house, he took what he wanted. He gave no thought to doing all these terrible things. He was a terrifying man and yet Christine still called him an “angel”.

And then there is another line in one of Christine’s songs. “He’s there, the Phantom of the opera, inside my mind.” And here’s where I got the idea for a woman who had nightmares of terrifying angels. From here I branched away. It seemed only natural that the angels should be beautiful. But they were SO beautiful it was terrifying.

Ideas sometimes just form on their own and evolve as you start to write. Normally it would seem natural for the council of angels Jessica stands trial before to be all good angels but why shouldn’t the bad ones get representation too? And maybe not all of them were actually just? As they say, misery loves company.

The main evolution of my terrifying angels just came from my idea of looking at an accepted view and turning it to look different. Becoming a writer has made me look at everything I read in a completely new way. There’s nothing more satisfying than coming up with something no one else had thought of before!

Want to know more about Branded? Check out the Goodreads page.

Here is the cover of the second book in the Fall of Angels series, Forsaken. It will be published in January 2011 so make sure to check it out! Here you can find out more about Keary Taylor:

Her blog.

Her website.

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

Book Blogger Hop is a fun meme hosted by Crazy For Books. Enter your link and go hop around other blogs that are out there, ready to be discovered!

This week has been kind of weird. On Monday we didn't have school. Who doesn't like a day of no school? I had to go to P.E. because I still need 1 year of it to complete my credits. Then my mom was in a car accident, nothing happened to her but the car looks awful.

What are your feelings on losing followers? Have you ever stopped following a blog?

I think that it's important that we all that this could happen. I try to follow blogs that I know I will go back and maybe comment once in a while. If you don't visit the blog and check what new things they have, why follow them? Everyone has reasons why they do things and I think that everyone has a choice in who they decide to follow and who not to follow.

As for the second question, I have stopped following blogs but only because I saw that we didn't have the same kind of taste in books.

To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers.

Who are your favorite authors?

Some of my favorite authors are Ally Carter, Richelle Mead, Cinda Williams Chima, Kristin Cashore and so many more that I would just go on with the list!

While you're here make sure to visit the contest that I have going on:

Win Freefall by Anna Levine! Ends November 8th!

If you're visiting, make sure you leave your link and I'll make sure to visit your blog!

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Title: Beautiful Creatures
Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Pages: 563
Published: December 2009
Rating: 5/5
Summary: Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.
 
Review: The book starts off with Ethan having the boring days that he usually has until he gets to school and finds out that there is a new student. This is big news since there is never any new students or new residents. He soon finds out that there is more to this than it seems.
 
It was a good change to read from the point of view of a boy. I have to say that I enjoyed the change. Ethan is a character who told everything how it was even though it may have been a bit different. I liked how he didn't give up on Lena even if she wanted to.
 
Lena was the one who had a secret. She tried to keep Ethan away from all of it but he wouldn't let her. She had to discover many things about herself that made big changes to her life. Her life was different than what others had and knew she had to live with it.
 
This was a great book and I can't wait to read the next book! It was different than the typical book where the guy is the one with a secret and the girl is just going along with it. I think that this is a change that many would really appreciate.