Feature & Follow #37 -- Or the one where I go from "meh" to "LOVE"!!!

     So, Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  It's where you answer the weekly question and then link yourself to the social hop!  We each go check out the other blogs, helping to support our endeavors as a community.  Also, do it just because it's fun! :D

Q: Have you ever disliked or felt “meh” about a book only to later change your mind and love it?

Prompt Submitted by: Megan @ Love Literature Art and Reason

A:  I don't usually change my mind once I've read a book, but currently I'm re-reading Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, and I'm enjoying it way more than the first time I read it four years ago (I wouldn't call it love thought)! :D

     If you stop by and want to follow us, we prefer Facebook, Bloglovin and Twitter follows (please and thank you)! :)  Happy visiting everyone!

Feature and Follow #36 - Or the One Where We Talk Paper or Ebooks!

       So, Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  It's where you answer the weekly question(s) and link yourself to the social hop!  We each go check out the other blogs, helping to support our endeavors as a community.  Also, do it just because it's fun! :D

Q:  Hard print (real thing) or Kindle/Nook, which is your favorite?

A:  To be honest, it's more of a 50/50 situation nowadays.  I love the fact that I have so many choices when I'm carrying my Kindle around, and I have noticed that reading is easier on my Fire than it was with my Touch.  But I do always have at least one print book in my purse at all times, and I do seem to read faster with an actual book most of the time.  What about everyone else?  What do you all prefer?  Share with me in the comments! :D

       If you stop by and want to follow us, we prefer Facebook, Bloglovin', and Twitter follows (please and thank you)! :)  Happy visiting everyone!

Feature and Follow #35 - Or the One Where I Talk About Doubles...

       So, Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  It's where you answer the weekly question and link yourself to the social hop!  We each go check out the other blogs, helping to support our endeavors as a community.  Also, do it just because it's fun! :D

Q:  Do you own any doubles of your books?  What led you to getting a second...or third or fourth...copy?

A:  So, yeah...I'm going to admit that I'm a bit of a freak about my Anne of Green Gables series!  I have the first two books three times each!  I have a falling apart Scholastic paperback, a beautiful illustrated edition and an ebook of #1.  Of #2, I have an old (slightly falling apart) hardcover edition, a paperback version and an ebook.  The third one I have a paperback and an ebook.  The rest are just paperbacks, but I'd love hardcovers with the original artwork.  A first edition of AoGG is my dream book!  I love old books and old children's books are my personal crack (I desperately want the anniversary edition of A Wrinkle in Time too, even though I have a paperback and an ebook!).  I'm going to shut up now, and put the freak flag away!!! LOL

       If you stop by and want to follow us, we prefer Facebook, Bloglovin', and Twitter follows (please and thank you)! :)  Happy visiting everyone!

Feature and Follow #34 - Or the One Where I Share My Favorite Books of 2014!

       So, Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  It's where you answer the weekly question and then link yourself to the social hop!  We each go check out the other blogs, helping to support our endeavors as a community.  Also, do it just because it's fun! :D

Q:  Happy New Year!!!  What was your favorite book of 2014 - or books if you can't name just one? -- via AlisonCanRead

A:  I had so many this year!  Here are some pictures linked to the Gooreads pages, of my absolute top favorites! :D

    

    

    

    

    

      If you stop by and want to follow us, we prefer Facebook, Bloglovin' and Twitter follows (please and thank you)! :)  Happy visiting everyone!

Top Ten Tuesday #18 - Books That Make Me Cry

     Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, which allows bloggers to share lists of some of our favorite (and not-so favorite) things.  This week we’ll be highlighting the top ten books that made us cry!  I am not usually a crier, and it takes something really emotional to jerk my heartstrings into phoning it in to my tear ducts!  I think this list was difficult for me, because I have so few books that really affect me that way.  But the ones that have are beautiful and definitely need to be shared with more people.  Some of them are pretty famous though (which is for good reason).  I hope you guys check them out and love them just as much as I do!

     

     As always, happy Tuesday and have fun everyone!  Also, MAKE SURE TO LEAVE A LINK TO YOUR POSTS SO I CAN VISIT YOU GUYS TOO!!!  Without further adieu, the books (it's always all about the books)!  :)  All of the books are linked to their Goodreads pages. 

Top Ten Books That Made Me Cry

1. A Walk To Remember by Nicholas Sparks:  Back when he'd only written a couple of books and this was such a thing among all the girls in my middle school!  Oh God, did I ever bawl like a baby at the ending! 
2. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick:  This was a very personal read for me and I can't exactly divulge why (as it's a really big spoiler), but I was bawling my eyes out by the time the book ended.  It seriously wrecked me for days.
3. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery:  Seriously, when Gilbert is ill and Anne is regretting their estrangement I was choking back sobs (all the times I've read it; which is many!).  Poor Anne and Gil, almost losing their chance at true happiness!
4. Christy by Catherine Marshall:  Ohmigod!  Fairlight! And anything Miss Alice ever says, along with all those poor and proud kids.  I absolutely adore this book, but it always mists me over.
5. The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder:  This book is to me what The Fault In Our Stars seems to be to everyone else in the book world, on the internet and in the YA circles in general.  It's a cancer story, but it's so much more than that.

     6.  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell:  This made me cry as much for Eleanor and Park's ill-fated, 

          beautiful first love as it did for Eleanor's life in general.  By the ending I was in love with both of them.

     7.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:  The others got to me, sure, but even when the big WTF 

          happened at the end of HBP, I didn't cry.  This one though, was nonstop!  Hedwig, George's ear, 

          Remus, Tonks, Fred, and also the Ron reunuion, etc.  SO MANY FEELS (which the epilogue 

          promptly RUINED)!

     8.  Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares:  Maybe because it was the last one in the series.  Or 

          maybe because there was a character death that was strategically planned to make the tears gush.  

          Also, Bee goes through the most it seems like, and she's my absolute favorite of them all.  Insta-tears.

     9.  Ordinary People by Judith Guest:  It's about the distinegration of a family after the death of their               oldest son.  It's a sad and depressing book to begin with, but when Conrad finally lets loose in his                 shrink's office my floodgates open.

   10.  Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt:  Considering the whole theme is choosing between living 

           forever or just one lifetime, tears aren't surprising.  But at the end, when we find out Winnie's choice, 

           I always feel weepy.

Honorable Mentions

1. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
2. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
3. The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Book Blogger New Year's Challenge - Day 6

     So...yeah.  I have already gushed about this one in numerous memes (TTT and FF most notably) and absolutely adore it to pieces!  I don't know why it all comes down to this book, when I read so many in 2013 that I loved!  But there was just something about this one that meant so much more to me.  Read my review here.

Book Blogger New Year's Challenge - Day 5

     So, usually when I'm hating a book I decide to DNF it - mostly to preserve my own sanity.  But I also have struggled with a massive guilt complex about not finishing what I've started.  So I tend to let myself get suckered in by books that start out not so bad, but tailspin into nightmare train-wrecks!  I don't know about worst, but the most memorably bad book I read in 2013 was Towering by Alex Flinn.  A seriously big mess of a book, but when there was a plot twist involving an LSD drug leaf being grown by enslaved people underground...yeah, just NO!!!  My review here.  Read at your own risk!!!!!

Book Blogger New Year's Challenge - Day 4

The Books I Won't Miss In 2014

There are SO MANY books I could include in this!  But I'm just going to list the ones that I absolutely have a biological, moral and every other kind of imperative to read! :D

Book Blogger New Year's Challenge - Day 3

Books I'm Sad I Missed in 2013

Top Ten Tuesday #17 - Or My Top Ten Books (Overall) of 2013

     Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, which allows bloggers to share lists of some of our favorite (and not-so favorite) things.  This week we’ll be highlighting the top ten books that we read this year!  I have already done a similar post for Feature & Follow with AlisonCanRead and Parajunkee.  But it was the Top Ten New to You Authors of 2013.  Coincidentally, some of the books do overlap!  Such hard choices to make this list, and leave off other favorites from it.  Can't wait to see everyone else's lists and I'm sure my TBR will be creaking from the weight by the time I'm done visiting! LOL
      As always, happy Tuesday and have fun everyone!  Also, MAKE SURE TO LEAVE A LINK TO YOUR POSTS SO I CAN VISIT YOU GUYS TOO!!!  Without further adieu, the books (it's always all about the books)!  :)  All of the books are linked to their Goodreads pages. 

Top Ten Books I Read In 2013 (No Specific Order, Except For #1)

Oh my GOD!  This book you guys!  I think by combing through I have found this year's definitive favorite.  I just absolutely fell in love with Cherry and this book.  I want everyone to read it!  But I also think that it's a little special and some people probably won't "get" it.  I did and I am so glad!

One of the best, most innovative time-travel books I have ever read.  Absolutely hanging on the edge of my seat the whole time and I fell for all the characters too!  Cannot recommend it highly enough.

A completely fitting ending for one of the best high fantasy series I've ever read!  The series stayed consistently awesome, never falling into the tropes so many others do.  Plus it has non-stop action, a kick-ass heroine and a swoony bodyguard! (Hector FTW!)

The alien civil rights movement, an evil master plan, romance, an awesome sense of humor and some masterful prose!  What's not to love about this fantasy novel involving alien exchange students coming to Earth?  Nothing, that's what!

I was unsure of this book when I first got it for review.  But I absolutely adored the main character Ezra, and his snarky, witty self!  Also, one of the best depictions of a teen in a shitty situation but trying to make the best of it.  Never phony and not always pretty, but definitely a great read!

What if Kate Middleton was ugly and lived in a trailer park?  That's basically the quick and dirty of this one, though it digs much deeper into the right reasons for love and learning to accept yourself for who you are.  Oh yeah, it also has a wickedly hilarious sense of humor! (If it seems like I'm saying that a lot, it's because it matters.)

A novel in which the heroine and every other woman in society is treated like property and less than human.  Very important things to say about our world and the independence of human beings in relation to others.  Plus, it has a really wonderfully and realistically developed romance.

All I can say is though this one is late to the party (I just finished it two days ago), it is extremely impressive in its own right.  It's the second novel in a trilogy but completely avoided the sophmore syndrome most fall into.  Not to mention that it is a chilling retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it has a pretty hot romance in it too (the love triangle was done so well I could deal with it - rare)!

Astrid is a complete and total asshole.  She's basically a truth-telling, saracastic, arrogant and power hungry bomb of a human being.  It's both shades of hilarious and heartbreaking.  This book digs deep into what it means to co-exist with other human beings - and does it with a pie in one hand (to shove in your face) and a tissue in the other hand.

This one terrified me, made me relate to it and had me bawling like a baby.  Such a personal book to read and definitely the best I've read by Matthew Quick.  He proves he can pack punches like any of the big guns in YA.