Okay, I’m so freaking excited about this week’s TTT topic! I love covers but often don’t super connect with them until I’ve read the book. Then I fall absolutely in love if they actually make sense, haha.

Book that lived up to the cover:

      I adored all of the these books. The covers were all shiny and tempting and then I was so happy when reading them. I love that these covers all make sense for the book as well. Above world has necklaces like that sea-horse one that are critical to the story. Poison has a scene that matches the cover perfectly. I pictured the MC of The Emperor’s Soul just like the cover (which also helped set the mood!). Fire obviously has a MC big on archery, haha. Finally the two lesser known favorites: Bane is a second book, so check out White Witch if you haven’t yet, and Destiny Binds is the first in an indie series that is seriously the best indie I’ve ever read. You must check out that trilogy if you like YA urban fantasy!

Books that are pretty but didn’t work for me:

   I can’t get enough of these covers, but I didn’t enjoy the books as much as I hoped I would. I know a lot of people liked Stormdancer but it was just too depressing for me. This doesn’t stop me from drooling all over my copy! Zenn Scarlett and The Summer Prince both got me to request them because of those shiny covers, but I ended up being disappointed with the writing styles. Finally, Red Madrassa was a tour book that also swayed me because of that gorgeous cover, but was lacking in the plot department. These are all books that I am still tempted to buy just to have the cover on my shelf >.>.

What have been your favorite covers??

 -A

 

Another Top Ten Tuesday! It’s been a while since I’ve embarked on one of these awesome lists, but I thought I’d join in again ;-). TTT  is brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week is a bit of a gripe week I guess. I could try to make a list of books I thought I’d like less, but I don’t tend to read books that I don’t think I’ll like, so griping it is! There might be books here that you really like, and I’ll say first that it is entirely possible I was in the wrong mood when reading something. If you ended up really liking a book, I’d love to get recommendations on which are worth trying again!

 Too much gore: Daughter of the Blood opens with a very disturbing scene that I will never scrap from my brain and continues on with a lot of gore and violence from there. The concept of The Black Jewels series is freaking awesome, and so I kept hoping to get to a part that didn’t hurt my stomach so much. Bayou Moon was an otherwise awesome book that had a couple of very gory scenes that really freaked me out, and now that’s the only thing that sticks out in my head when I think of it :(.

   Slower than expected: So I know that these are all much beloved books, but please don’t hate me! Brisingr and Clash of Kings are just the ones in the series that I’m currently stuck on and it makes me sad. I wanted to tear through both of these series as much as everyone else did, but between blogging distractions (oo shiny new books!) and the length, I just lost interest. I do definitely plan to try them again at that magically point when I have time >.>. The Great Hunt ended up being really great, but I was having a hard time hanging on for a bit there.

  Too high of expectations: Once again, these three are much beloved and excellent books (Sanderson is my favorite author after all!), however no book could live up to the hype that I had in my brain for these three. Stormdancer was a bit too depressing and descriptive for me honestly. Cinder just got a bit slow in the middle and I literally had been drooling over it for weeks, trying to resist reading it until I had gotten through classwork. Finally, Alloy of Law is by my favorite author and was in a setting that just didn’t do it for me, so again too high of expectations.

 Scattered plot: Both of these had interesting/fun premises but the plot just didn’t get going for most of the book. The Summer Prince is a cool dystopia, but most of the book is about crazy art projects (like the lights in her arm), and so I didn’t really know what the main plot was supposed to be. Dealing With Dragons is a juvenile book, and so it was mostly just light-hearted fun with dragons. However, there was a plot in the end, I just wish it would have started sooner :( or at least been more obvious that that was the end goal ya know? I need direction, haha.

In any case, again, I know most of these are excellent and beloved books. Hence why I expected so much from them and was a little disappointed. Any of them you think I should give a second chance? ;-)

 -A

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, so go checkout all the future topics :D.Whew, it’s been a while since I did a TTT, but I just couldn’t resist this topic! I am notoriously bad at excitedly getting new books even though I haven’t read half the books I bought in the past year. There are always so many review books and library books that need reading first. I’ve been investing in bookshelves from friends who are moving just to hold all the books! I have to admit I like the way they look in my living room though :D.

   All right, first up are the books I got for Christmas this year. I was dying to get these three and so excited when they arrived, but I just haven’t found the time to read them yet! I can’t believe it, I mean Seraphina has dragons, how could I resist dragons?? What always ends up happening is that there is a library or review book that I need to read before the deadline, so everything else that can wait does wait :(. I’m definitely going to need to have a month soon where I read only books off my shelf I think…. Also to be fair, The Way of Kings is terrifyingly long, so I might need that month just for it ;-).

   
Next up are the books that I’ve bought over the past couple of months because I’ve heard such amazing things and just couldn’t resist anymore. I think that my thought process was that if I owned a copy and had it staring at me from the shelf, I would be more likely to find time to read it >.>. Also Night Circus and City of Bones were on sale, so that is even more difficult to resist, haha! Gah, just looking at this post makes me want to do nothing but read for the next month.

 Finally are the books that I got the day they were released this past month, but I haven’t cracked open yet. I even specifically planned to read them as soon as possible to have a review up close to the publication date, but that is slipping farther and farther away. I really do need to read Frost Burned though since my mom is waiting to borrow it ;-). These two are the ones that are actually top of the TBR pile because I’m still hoping to get reviews up within a month of publication!

That’s all! Well, there are plenty more books on the shelf to be read, but these were the ones I was most excited about and can’t believe I haven’t gotten to yet. What are your reasons for not getting to a much anticipated book? What’s most urgent on your TBR?

Happy Reading!

 - A

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish. Check out the upcoming topics to start posting!

Aw, such a great topic! I love memory lane, even though I have a rather horrible memory and for some reason the Harry Potter books are sticking rather firmly in my head…. I also can’t remember some of the titles involved, so forgive me!

1. My dad reading to me - My dad loved to read to me (at least I assumed he loved it, I loved it!) when I was a little kid. He read to me when I was sick, or even just not feeling 100%. I got headaches a lot, and it helped me fall asleep when looking at the TV hurt my eyes. He was awesome at doing all the voices of The Hobbit and definitely sparked my love of high fantasy!

2. My mom reading to me while traveling - For a while during my childhood, my mom would have to travel for weeks at a time. We would get two copies of the same children’s book and she would read to me over the phone, telling me when to turn the page and everything, just like on those recordings but so much better ;-). If you can’t tell, my parents were big into the teaching children to love reading thing, and my mom was so awesome for figuring out a way to keep reading to me even when she couldn’t be in the same state!

3. Discovering Harry Potter - I got HP1 as a birthday gift before I knew that it was a thing (possibly before it was a thing), and it sat on my shelf a little while. For some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to read a book in secret, because it’s fun to do things in secret as a kid, even when you know your parents would have no problem with what you are doing (I was weird, what can I say ;-)). So I proceeded to start reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in secret. I only got part of the way through before realizing it was freaking awesome and needing to tell my parents how awesome it was and it was around then that HP became huge I think anyway, haha.

4. Getting HP4 - I was still too young to stay up until midnight when Goblet of Fire was coming out, so I was resigned to getting it the day after or even the weekend after *sigh*. My dad, however, was not willing to let his daughter wait for a book, because we have priorities in this household! So, unbeknownst to me mind you, he went to the midnight release and got me a copy, didn’t read it, and left it on the kitchen table for me to find when I woke up the next morning. My parents were always amazingly patient and waited for me to finish the household copy before reading it, that’s true love ;-).

5. Staying up to finish HP5 - Sirius Black is my favorite character, so needless to say the ending of Order of the Phoenix was a little rough for me. I stayed up quite late for a kid who had to go to school in the morning and then couldn’t stop crying. My dad is a light sleeper, so when I walked downstairs to get some water, he came down and saw my tear-streaked face. I proceeded to explain that I couldn’t tell him why I was upset because I couldn’t spoil the book for him, that just wasn’t done! He said he was really all right with it and he’d rather have his daughter feel better ;-).

6. Midnight release of HP7 - Yes, I did make it to a couple of the midnight releases myself ;-). And let me tell you, the city I lived in went all out! We have a train museum and the local bookstore worked with the train museum to RENT A TRAIN and take us on a ride on the Hogwarts Express that gets attacked by Death Eaters and defended by the trio :D. This was in addition to decorating the entire museum with wizarding shops etc, it was freaking awesome. I’m also proud to say that I know one of the actors that played Ron :D.

7. First review copy - When I first started book blogging, I didn’t actually even realize that authors and publishers sent people books to review. I just wanted to catalogue my book reviews and hopefully meet other people with similar tastes as me to swap book recommendations and stories with. When I was first emailed a book review request, I was warmed that an author actually cared what I thought and thought I would be able to help promote their book. Thank you Peter Darrach for taking a chance on me! :D

All right, that’s actually all I can think of at the moment. I have lots of other general memories, like going to the library and bookstores, but nothing else so specific. I actually haven’t gone to that many midnight releases…. I think that that necessitates a crazy group of friends to drag me along ;-). I am hoping to add book conventions to this list next time I make it though :D. I’m also sure I’ve forgotten something, horrible memory like I said ;-). So, link up your favorite bookish memories and maybe they’ll jog more of mine ;-). And remember to let me know if you are a new follower and I’ll follow you back!

-A