The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins ☆☆☆☆☆

Wow! I don't know what else to say except that I regret not picking this book up sooner. I'm thankful I had so many people pushing me to put it at top of my to-be-read stack and reading it as soon as possible. I was blown away.

I've been really caught up in dystopian societies and this one comes from a whole new level. After the first two chapters I was rightfully nauseated. It reminded me of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson that I read in high school and has stuck with me every day since because of its brutality and horror.

But it didn't stay that way... I easily got caught up in the little details with Katniss and would often let the "reality" of the situations just as she would. I got so caught up in the survival mode that I literally felt like I was in the book. When I finished the second part, my heart was beating so loud in my ears that I couldn't sleep. I ended up turning my lamp back on and reading until I felt myself calm.

It isn't often that I lose myself so entirely in a book and it is the most amazing experience of reading a book. I'm thinking of buying the next book at putting it at the top of my TBR stack above books that have been waiting a very long time, just so I can get a taste of the world and the story again. This book is definitely a must read for anyone that hasn't already picked it up. I can't wait to see how the movie transforms everything!

Goodbye 2011, I wanna be a full-time writer in 2012!

As the last day of 2011, I have finished compiling my list of 2011 reads. With this list I've learned a lot of things about my reading. For instance...

I read 32 books this year. Really that isn't a lot and I wish it was more. However...

17 of my 32 books read were in the summer alone. That's a book a day. Awesome!

My first finished book of the year was the last book of the Vampire Academy series.
My last finished book of the year was the first book of the Vampire Academy spin-off.
Now, tell me that isn't cool! It totally wasn't planned that way.

I surprisingly read a lot of books I didn't want to, or wouldn't have on my own.
Some were for a children's literature class my spring semester.
Some were from recommendations I trusted, even if I didn't believe it.
And one was a professor recommendation.

While The Catcher in the Rye is my all-time favorite book of the classics, this year I have found my all-time favorite book period: Divergent by Veronica Roth.

And most importantly of all, I learned inspiration from all these authors. This year has made me want to write even more than I already did. And starting Jan 1, I plan to write every single day towards one of my planned novels in hopes that by this time next year I will have a manuscript ready for revisions.

So I'll see you next year bloggers! Have a happy and healthy New Year and best wishes to all!!

Bloodlines by Richelle Mead

Bloodlines (Bloodlines 1) by Richelle Mead ☆☆☆☆☆

I will admit that I put this book off for way too long. I did start reading it when I first got it in the mail, but I had only made it three chapters in when I let the school semester take over my life. Essentially, this book was on the top of my list for my winter break reading, other than the book I borrowed from my professor and another book I was already half way through. Even with reason I feel like I should've dropped everything to put this first.

When I first pre-ordered the book I thought, hey it'd be great to see where the Vampire Academy world goes now. I was thinking in terms of story continuation and nothing more. And I was wrong. This book blew me away. Sydney as a narrator was more than I could have expected and I loved getting to know her and getting to know the world again through her. Most especially, getting to know Adrian again through her. It was brilliant.

The story line was also amazingly well written. There were several different plot twists going on and I am glad to say I figured out all but one of them before they were revealed in the story. The one I didn't figure out was more because my imagination was far too exaggerated. I loved stories were you can interact as a reader and figure the story out for yourself, and she set the story up perfectly in that way to invite the readers to explore it more. Admittedly, one plot point I wouldn't have figured out were it not for her Bloodlines Book Club on YouTube. And not only was the story great, but I must say that the writing has improved dramatically since the first Vampire Academy book, where I gave it a very low reading level and almost didn't finish reading it because of typos. This book impressed me on every angle really. I can't wait for The Golden Lily to be released this summer!

Hula by Lisa Shea

Hula by Lisa Shea ☆☆☆☆

This book was lent to me by one of my favorite professors in hopes that it might me an inspiration for my thesis since I enjoy young adult literature. And while it truly is a great story, it didn't live up to the standards of modern young adult stories.

The cover jacket tells you that the story is about a young girl's abuse by her father and sister, as well as her own journey into sexuality. With this description and a basis in any other young adult book, you'd expect a girl that is beaten on a regular basis and becomes reckless in getting familiar with her sexuality. In reality, the dad was more intimidating than actually causing pain and was admittedly a little psychotic, but there wasn't much more there. Her sister had more sexual awakenings than she did.

This realization that it didn't meet the criteria of the young adult books did create a few questions. Is the genre really pushing issues too far? Angry parents are constantly in the media saying that authors are going too far with their descriptions of abuse, sex, drugs, and more in their books. I've looked back and my own youth and found it justified before, but after this book I start to wonder what truly is too far. Compared to Go Ask Alice, I'm sure this book wouldn't stand up at all. It was definitely worth the read though, and I do believe I learned a lot in reading it.

Enclave by Ann Aguirre

Enclave by Ann Aguirre ☆☆☆☆

I made it half way through this book before my first semester as a grad student killed me. Of course, the minute my last assignment was turned in I picked up the book again.

When I first read the cover jacket I wasn't really interested in the book. I bought it because I was reading a lot of dystopian fiction and it was highly recommended. Once I started reading it, I was pleasantly surprised. I quickly got sucked into the story line and didn't want to put the book down. The months that I had to leave it sitting because of other priorities left me wondering what the characters were doing while I was away. That's always a good sign of a book, when you start to lose touch with reality :)

I am not a lover of zombies, and this dystopian society did involve zombies (although they went by several different names that didn't include "zombie"). In fact, the only zombie book I have read made me write off zombie books in general until now. This was somehow more believable to me.

In all though, there were only two things I didn't like. The first was the ending. Had I not known there was a sequel in the works I would have been severely disappointed. The ending was left open too far for my liking. It reached a conclusion, but not a conclusion I would find viable for ending a book. I don't like movies with cliffhanger, or unsatisfying, endings and the same goes for books.

The second thing I didn't like was the "Author's Notes" at the end that explain all the details of how she constructed the book, including website links to go through her research process yourself. I like books that interact with the reader, where we actually have to give as much as the writer. I don't like having the research process laid out for me. It almost felt like "Look at me, I did research! I'm a great writer!" I won't say it wasn't interesting though. There was some good information that could be used for many post-apocalyptic stories that might come in handy, but it seemed a little too neat and clean for a book that left me with an unsatisfying ending.

Overall I really liked the book and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Everlasting (The Immortals 6) by Alyson Noel

Everlasting by Alyson Noel ☆☆☆☆

The finale is here.

I'm glad this series is over. The first and second books were amazing and un-put-down-able, the third and fourth were filler I trudged through, and the fifth and sixth finally started wrapping everything up nicely.

For me, the ending was completely unexpected. There were so many plots and side plots within this series that I was never entirely sure were it might go or end up. And where it did end up was interesting and uniquely Ever.

Ever and Damen's romance is definitely an eternal love fit for any YA fiction series. The fact that they were immortals and not an expected supernatural being like vampires was its own original twist. And I have to say that I learned a lot from this series. I learned there are different mystical properties to stones. I learned how to center myself (whether it works or not I'm still unsure). And I learned to trust myself.

In this book specifically it becomes really apparent how this series stemmed from her own personal loss and her attempts at accepting it and moving on. The journey and experiences that Ever deal with in the final installment mirror the lesson that Alyson Noel learned in her own journey. While I would have preferred it be a less obvious moral it did work for the purposes of the series.

I recently heard it was in the process of selling movie rights. I would like to see how this series would be interpreted as a movie and I'd probably be one of the first in line to see it.

I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies 1) by Pittacus Lore

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore ☆☆☆☆☆

I must confess that in this instance I saw the movie before I read the book. I saw the movie as soon as it came out in theaters, only finding out a week before that it was even based on a series, and with that in mind I didn't have time to read the book before the movie. So, of course, this review ends up addressing both.

I do love the book and the movie equally. On the movie side, it had an amazing scene where they have an image recognition software program that searches the internet for their pictures and instantly deletes their existence. This is Hollywood magic and not in the book sadly. The movie also had a side plot involving why they were in Paradise, OH, how Sam is involved as more than a friend, and how it all ties their pasts and futures together. This was vaguely mentioned at the end of the book, obviously to become a key point of the sequel, and I like that the movie addressed it sooner.

Now the book was just plain awesome in its own right. Rather than a whirlwind Hollywood romance, John and Sarah get to know each other for months rather than days, and their relationship is natural and real. My favorite part of the book is all his flashbacks of Lorien so that as readers we can see the planet in all its glory (and subsequent destruction) which isn't available in the movie. These scenes not only explain where he came from, but who he is, and it shows his family on the planet. This also allows for information on how he gets his Legacy powers, who they come from, etc. And as for his Legacies, there are more of them and they are more interesting than the movie could even handle.

I highly recommend this book and I can't wait for the sequel to it that comes out at the end of the month!

Book: 5 stars
Movie: 4.5 stars