I Didn't Die....Again

So I didn't die again. I've been very, very lazy with my postings but not lazy with my reading! I've read about thirty books over the last month or so and I'm just dreading posting. This is so because back when I started the challenge I hadn't really thought about how I would summarize the book and my thoughts. So I decided I'll give a short blurb about the book and then focus on how it made ME feel. I'll also add some general Q&A at the end so any readers (are there even any!) can have some more info.

I'm also toying with the idea of posting videos on Youtube. Book reviews are scarce in that site and I feel like I should promote better literacy amongst the Youtube community. (Like I'm so important I know -_-). I have a flip camera but to covert the video, edit and post takes a ton of time! Plus I live with my family and explaining to them why their daughter is talking to a camera about books instead of getting a second job would be awkward not to mention infuriating. So I will try to put together a video and see how it goes.

Wish me luck!

I Didn't Die!

I promise I'm still here. I was on Spring Vacation and thought I'd take a break from posting. I haven't stopped Reading though! I've finished six more books and will be posting very soon.

8 down, 92 to go! Oh Boy...

So I'm really feeling the crunch. I should have read about twenty books by now but I've only finished a measly seven! I blame those forever long Cassandra Clare books. No...I blame myself. I'm seriously kicking it into high gear tonight and I will finish my new book Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (the second book of the Shopaholic series) by tonight! I've read about five chapters in about an hour so I hope to finish soon.

On to Clockwork Angel. It was a good book and had waaay less drama than Cassandra's previous books. The book is about this girl Tessa who moves from New York to London to live with her brother. She gets off the boat and is captured by these two warlock sisters with evil intent. They force her to use her shape-shifting talent, which she didn't know about, so that she can "marry" the Magistrar. Shadowhunters rescue her and they help her find her lost brother in which the Magistrar has kidnapped. She has two love interests in the story one being the lovely, secretive Will and the other the sick, understanding Jem. In short she learns of her dark past and what she really is all while saving her brother and herself from the Magistrar. The book has a surprise ending that I DID NOT see coming. I rarely make exclamations of surprise when reading but this is the second time EVER that I screamed, "No wayyyy!!!" I most definitely look forward to the second book which will be released this September.

As I mentioned earlier I am reprising the Shopahilic series. I have already read the first so I decided to start with the second and moving on from there. 92 books to go!

Finished City of Glass

So I finished City of Glass like two days ago but I just got my wifi to work recently so I am now able to peruse the internet! Yes, my internet was down for a while and I was majorly p.o'd but it's working now.

Ok, City of Angels was again very, very long. In Cassandra Clare's books there is a lot of action and a lot goes down per book. I guess that's why it took me so long to finish it since after every hurdle I felt like I needed a break from reading. Well the book was great as usual. A lot of questions were answered but even more were raised (ughhh). I really wish I could write every detail of the book but it's a really long storyline and I hate being a spoiler. I will however give the gist of the book.

Basically Clary and the gang have to travel to Idris, land of the Shadowhunters, and find a way to defeat the evil Valentine. Keep in mind that Valentine was married to her mother and is father to her and her brother/love Jace. Through out the three books its apparent that they may not be siblings but the truth is always evaded and they can not act on their feelings. Well they all travel to Idris and they meet some people, pasts are revisited and anticipation is in the air . (I'm really trying to not say anything) A big fight between demons, downworlders and shadowhunters arise and I will neither confirm nor deny if Valentine is defeated or not. Again many questions are answered, Clary has a great power, Jace has a great power, Who is Sebastian?!?, and much much more....

Please read the series for yourself. I felt as if these three books were suffice because the end of the third book  seemed like a good place to stop but I learned that there will be three more books in the series. The fourth installment  is going to be released in April.

I am now reading another Cassandre Clare which is a prequel to this series. It is called Clockwork Angels and will also be another series of books. 94 books to go!

Hey, Hey, Hey!

Let me start by saying that Josh Groban is an angel in disguise and that his voice amounts to the talents of a thousand heavenly beings.

Ok! I finished City of Ashes today and thank God for that! It wasn't boring just super looong again. I don't know what it is about these books but it is drama after drama. Good drama not silly-even-for-being-fiction drama. The book built up nicely on the first answering a few questions like "Will Clary's mom ever wake from her magically induced coma?" or "Will Jace and Clary ever find out they're not really brother and sister this whole time (I totally called it!) and finally be together?". Ok that last question sounded weird but what happens is that Jace and Clary find out they have the same father, who also happens to be the bad guy, (Think Star Wars and Luke and Lea) and even though they are in love with each other it would be icky icky incest of they ever did anything. Welllll....This book gave many references and clues implying that they aren't brother and sister but every time the truth is about to come out some more drama goes down! Talk about frustrating. It seemed to me that this book was intentionally vague and a total tease. The third better be worth my time since I'm investing all of my obsessing time on this lol.

Well I thought the second book was good and had some epic battle scenes. I look forward to the third and really, REALLY do hope that every single truth/question gets answered soon! The fourth book comes out in about two months and I have no clue how I survive without knowing what happens. 95 books to go and we're almost done with February. Thats roughly ten books a month or two books a week or too many scary numbers!! Wish me luck = )

Really Cool App!

Ok so I haven't finished a book and the countdown on my page is really freaking me out but I swear I WILL buckle down and get to reading. Anyway to all those who use Google Chrome you will have noticed that you can add apps to your home page. I recommend using the YourNextRead app because it's a great way to find books that will interest you on what you've previously read.

What you do is type the name, genre, author etc into the search box and click the appropriate name. Based on what you clicked they give you this cool web-like thing that recommends books similar to what you searched for. You can even click the thumbs down or up to vote on whether it was a good recommendation. You can also filter the books according genre, read synopsis, preview the book (if available), create reading lists and find links to the kindle editions.

I really love this app because I'm at the point where every time I go to the bookstore I'm like, "read that already, no don't like or what's it about". So in a nutshell this really helps me choose what books I will like and even discover some new reads!

So I was supposed to post this yesterday....

I do hope everyone had a very good Valentine's Day. Some say this is a useless holiday that only benefits candy companies and those alike but I myself had a very good day. I had some donuts and coffee with the best friend then headed out to dinner and a movie with my other best friend. (BTW I saw Never Say Never and it was awesome! If you love or hate the Biebs you got to admit that his story is inspiring).

I finished my book Sunday night and it was good for being a novel geared towards teens. I'm not going to recap the book because it was soooo long but I'll give a general idea of the book. It wasn't necessarily a long book (about 500 pages) but the story was the first in the series so it had to set up the entire preface of the books. Ok, what you need to know about this book is that Clarissa Fray found out she is a member of a secret underworld society (in which her mother hid her from) that is sworn to protect the world from demons, vampires, werewolves etc. She meets three shadowhunters (demon hunters-think Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and is swept up into some major drama that relays back and forth from her own personal discoveries and problems and the inevitable takeover of the underworld.

I thought this was a good book if you are into the whole teen, sci-fi series. It's a good read and I wouldn't mind finishing the series which is about five or so books (off the top of my head). The series apparently was so popular that the writer, Cassandre Clare, is starting a spin off series from the original books. I look forward to reading the first book soon after I finish this series.

So my final verdict that I did not hate City of Bones despite that teen novels make me gag = ). City of Ashes up next!

I've been bad.....

Ok so it's been how many days since I last posted? Well I've been bad....I am not reading Revolutionary Road. It was something about the play in the beginning that I found exceptionally dull so I stopped reading it. Since then I scrambled to find a book that would catch my attention but to no avail my ADD has been to great for me to overcome. Well I found a book, finally, called The City of Bones. I think I mentioned that this will be one of my full series books I wanted to read. Well it's good so far and I am almost finished. With my new book light I hope to complete this book by tomorrow!

Oh! And Happy Valentine's Day! Me and some girlfriends are going for dinner and a movie and I expect it will be a relaxing night. So have a nice holiday and I hope to post again as soon as possible.

New Book!!

Ok as I sit and listen to my house music I am now ready to reveal the next book in this project. I know I said that I was going to read series books completely but I just haven't had time to go to the bookstore and pick up Alice Through the Looking Glass so Revolutionary Road will have to do. I bought this book for fifty cents at the library, mainly because Leonardo DiCaprio was on the cover, and thought, "What they heck. I'll read it sometime". Well that sometime is now.

                             Quick list of books to come:

Shopaholic Series (I've already read the first so we'll start with the second)                                          
The Hunger Games Series (A re-read but a must!)
City of Angels Series
The Zombie Survival Guide (another re-read but it is sooo funny)
Facing the Frozen Ocean (Man vs. Wild wrote this. He's a great writer)
                                          
I will take suggestions as long as they are appropriate = )

It's for Real this Time!

Yay! Alice in Wonderland is finally completed. When I actually focused on the book it took me less than one hour to finish it and thank God for that! Now I know everyone has seen the Disney version of Alice but please, please read the book! It is by far one of the weirdest things I have read in a long time (and that is including Slaughterhouse Five) but it is so enjoyable too.

The movie differs from the book in many aspects but hey what movie is ever like the book (DO NOT say Twilight...just don't). Basically this little girl Alice falls asleep in some sort of meadow by her home and "wakes" to find a rabbit speaking and wearing a waistcoat scurrying through the grass. So she thinks, "Hey why don't I follow the demon-possessed rabbit because obviously it's perfectly normal". She follows the rabbit down a hole and falls foreverrrrr watching many peculiar things rush past her. She finally hits solid ground and immediately wonders if Alice is still Alice or did she magically become someone else when she fell. Ok here's the funny part. She actually recites poems to determine if she is still she and when she doesn't say them correctly she determines she changed into some dumb girl from her school. Wow! Ok so she gets over the fact that she is not she so she walks to a table in the room and takes a sip from a mysterious bottle that says, "Drink Me", not something I would do but whatever.  I'm about to speed this up. She grows small by fanning herself with a glove (?, weird), sees a door , needs the key, so she eats a cake to make her big (someone needs to teach her not to eat strange food) she grows too big then cries...a lot. She meets a mouse they both swim in her tears to shore and she has a race with some animals on the beach and scares them away with stories of her cat Dinah. She walks and walks some more until she sees a house which happens to be the rabbits house who being an a-hole mistakes her for his housekeeper and orders her to get him his gloves. The dumb girl says, "All right. It's all good to take orders from a rabbit", goes into his room finds his gloves, eats some more miracle grow food and fills up the house with her ginormous body. They try to get her out forcefully but I believe she punts someone out of the chimney, fans herself to grown small again and runs away from the house. She walks some more and comes up to a house with a footman waiting at the door. He's all depressed and is waiting for someone to open it for him. He and Alice have a philosophical conversation about doors and opening and waiting and blah blah. Alice leaves him and simply walks in the door (yes it was open the whole time so why couldn't the footman just walk in I'll never know) and sees a cook, lots of pepper and an abusive mom/duchess throwing a "baby" in the air. Alice rescues the baby which turns out to be a pig and finally thinks that this all weird stuff yet still walks on. She asks a caterpillar smoking hookah which way should he go and she decides to go to the Mad Hare's house. There we all know is the never-ending tea party in which the Mad Hatter, Sleeping Dormouse and Mad Hare have more philosophical words to share. Alice is offended and leaves the party and finds a random hallway in the middle of the woods that leads back to the room with the small table and the key. She grabs the key and grows small finally able to get into the garden on the other side. Ok almost at the end, still with me? She basically finds herself in the queens castle, plays croquet and is ordered to visit a tortoise and some dragon looking thing to hear stories. She goes and she hears the weirdest story about dancing with lobsters and under sea lessons and just a whole lot of nonsense. The dragon takes her back to the castle because a trial is about to start and Alice simply must be there! The trial is nonsense too with the "Off with your head!" happy queen, animals for jurors and the playing card soldiers. Alice is called as a witness, says she didn't know anything, yells at the queen and gets attacked by playing card soldiers. She then wakes up and was like, "Whoa that was weird", tells her sister about her dream then runs off to eat. Her sister then dozes of too after Alice leaves and dreams of rabbits, queens, tea and other pish posh and is happy that her younger sister will always have these memories to remind her of her happy childhood. The End.

Ok! I hope no one got lost. Again read it for yourself you will be glad that you did. I loved the book because it was as weird as weird gets. 97 books to go and I have no clue which book comes next.

Finished Another Book...Kinda

Well I suppose I am over my small mental breakdown from last Tuesday so I am back to announce that I have finished another book...kinda. Let me explain. In my World Literature class we recently read the book of Job (from the Bible-just in case).  I really haven't worked out the rules of the project and I swear that I am going to organize a list and stick to it but I thought that since Alice in Wonderland is taking too long to finish than I am comfortable with I should include Job to my book list.

Here's my take on the book. Now I already knew the story (even though I had to text my mom to bring me up to speed again ; ) so I went to class all prepared and what not. Well we began to discuss the story and its significance and I swear I had a moment in which my faith became so sure to me (I am a devout Christian). You see the book of Job is about a God-fearing man that would never, ever curse God or his name. So the Devil saunters up into heaven, for which I can not understand how he got there if he had been damned to hell, and basically says ,"Hey God, what about that Job character? What do you think about him?" God answers that Job is a righteous man and I believe describes him as having no other in comparison to his faith. So the Devil says, "Of course he loves you! Look at all the blessings you have given him. Take it away and you see how fast he curses your name". God agrees and soon Job's cattle, a few children and essentially his whole means of living is destroyed. Everyone expects him to scream and kick and damn every word for God yet he doesn't. He does, however, rip his clothing off and exclaims that God is still omniscient and giving. Later up in heaven the Devil, being out-witted, claims that Job hasn't had enough taken away from him to truly hate God. God then says, "Ok, do you what you want to his own body but make sure his life stays in tact". The next day Job erupts in boils or some kind of sickly skin disease yet while scraping away at his skin he doesn't cure God's name. In short a bunch of other bad stuff happens and Job, convinced by his peer pressuring friends, enraged finally asks god why he has been forsaken. Specifically he asks,  "What have I done to deserve this?!" God answers in the form of the whirlwind, "Who are you to ask such dark questions? Where were you when I made this world? Please tell me your wisdom..." (I'm severely paraphrasing) He goes on to tell Job that he does not need to know why his blessings were taken away from him because Job has no way to begin to fathom the inner workings of God's mind therefor some questions of his do not deserve answers. Job subsided, came to his senses and blessed God's name. For his repentance he was rewarded seven (?) times his old blessings and lived to be very happy and healthy.

Ok now to why this story made me so sure of my faith and the situations I am in now. Well I mean out of all the books in the Bible the book of Job, a story about obedience, is the one that we learned! This related so much to my life right now because I know that a few days ago when I was sobbing in my Deltona home one day before discussing this story I was so ready to kick, yell and scream and ask why this was happening to me. I mean I am a good person who works hard and gets good grades and essentially could be a lot worse in my opinion yet I had not been blessed with a job. This story helped me realize that I am in no position to question the path God has set me on and that in good time he will take care of me. Well he did. I filled out a gagillion more applications and actually didn't get a no in less than twelve hours and... I got a call back and wonderful telephone interview today! I won't know about the job offer for a few days but I am telling you now this, and any other endeavor of mine, will forever be in God's gracious hands.

So it is Jan 26, 2011 and I have 98 books to complete by next year. Alice in Wonderland will be the 97th if I don't finish the Odyssey (for school) first. Wish me luck...

Update Jan 24th

So this isn't a post about me finishing another book but I swear I am almost finished with Alice in Wonderland. I just wanted to give a small update as to why I haven't finished a one hundred and twenty page book in two days. Well lately I have been on the job hunt (well not lately, about two months in fact) and this morning I've just about had it. I literally had a small mental breakdown. Well it was about nine thirty in the morning and I wanted to check my email before showering for school. The night before I had submitted an application to Wendy's (don't judge me!) as a last resort shot at a job. So I'm checking my email and I see that I got two emails from Wendy's. Yay!, I say hoping that I got an interview. Well I didn't... It took less than twelve hours for them to take a three second look at my application and determine that I, A+ college student (and a very decent worker if they took the time to call up my old supervisor) was not a suitable candidate to work at Wendy's. That's when it happened. I just burst out crying. Not because I wanted to work at the illustrious Wendy's oh so much but because I realized that I am incapable of getting a job, any job! So I cried...a lot. Then I went to school, ate a brownie and watched some Buffy. I'm still depressed but I will continue to pound the pavement and find a job. I don't know when and I don't know how but at least I have my books and this project from having anymore breakdowns. So I tell you, or more myself since I think only I read this thing, that I will get back on schedule tears or no tears.

BTW Hearing how my friends are getting 40+ hours and "making bank" isn't helping either = )

Book #1 Down...

Mark this day of January 21, 2011 as the eventful day that my first book is completed. 

So today is a dreary day here in Deltona. It has been raining and thundering and lightening (?) all morning long and let me say that I have had enough. Anyway I finished Julie/Julia around eleven last night. I thought I would have finished sooner but those last forty pages (it was forty not eighty, sorry = ) were the longest pages of my life! Now I'm not saying it was boring (certainly not Crime and Punishment boring) but my goodness was it drawn out!!! I think that was all mental though because Julie Powell (writer of Julie/Julia-in case you didn't know) herself felt as if the end was drawn out and she was writing her book as closely to reality so it really was just me. Ok now onto the synopsis and what I thought of the book.

Basically this book is a memoir of Julie Powell, her dead end job and her quest to finish 524 recipes in 365 days. The book is funny and witty with cussing and cooking galore. Not much to say other than she cooks like a gagillion fatty, buttery french dishes all while dealing with her government job, crazy friends and adoring husband. Oh did I mention that she needs some major anger management courses? I mean half the book was of her crying/screeching/cussing at inanimate objects, food, her husband and anything else that pissed her off. Honestly I thought it was brilliant. It showed the reality of her project and how she was still human. Needless to say I loved this book. I mean it was the inspiration for this blog so of course I loved it! I especially loved the part where she dismembered a live lobster. It was so funny how she recounted the tale of a flailing lobster with a knife stuck in its head and a screaming Julie. I would recommend this to anyone who loves to cook or just needs some inspiration to get up and do something with their lives. 

Ok book #1 down. 99 books to go 364 days left. Book #2 is Lewis Carolle's Alice in Wonderland. As I write this post I am on page ten. I may or may not read Alice Through the Looking Glass...I mean out of the two movies Looking Glass was my favorite (it was weirder and I like weird) so it only seems fair to the project to read full series books, even if I don't like them. I guess the bookstore will be on my to-do list this weekend. I should be finished with this book by tomorrow or Sunday so I will be posting very soon = )

As I sit here on my bed, in my two bedroom home in Deltona, FL I have an epiphany. I was reading Julie/Julia, a book I picked at random from my growing library (124 books!), to distract myself from obsessing over The Hunger Games. (By the way the series is so good and nothing you would expect a lame teen series to be like) Anyway I was depressed, I was mad at Suzanne Collins for making me think so I picked up my Julie/Julia book and began to read. I was immediately immersed into the book and thought, "Why didn't I read this sooner!" I saw in Julie Powell what I see in myself. A stressed nineteen year old, lollygagging around instead of finishing my degree, hungry for something stable to do every day once a day for as long as it takes to get me back on track. That's when I thought of it. I do do something every day once a day for the past umpteen years of my life. Read! I have read at least one chapter of any book before bed for the past ten years and never thought I can turn that into something constructive. Well here it is...

My goal 100 books in 365 days. I began reading my first book on January 20th, 2011 and look forward to ending my last book on January 20th, 2012 (oooohh scary and foreboding!!)

Book #1 Julie/Julia. This is a cinch. It's day one and I'm already almost finished with my first book. Just eighty pages to go then I'll do my recap and move on to the next book. Did I also tell you I have six classes plus a bunny and a bird to take care of? Well now you know....Let's get started!

P.S Don't knock my grammar/punctuation = )