My 2016 Book Awards!

This long, arduous, tiresome year of 2016 has finally come to a close and I know a lot of people are with me here when I say good riddance. It wasn't a bad year per say personally, but just a year you wished didn't exist. A meh year. A nothing year. Some exciting things happened and some terrible things for the world happened, but I'm still here in the same place as last year and I don't feel like much has really changed. It's that 'the world's moving around you, while you're standing still' sort of feeling. Maybe I'm looking for a change that hasn't found me yet or more specifically I haven't gone looking for it yet. But while I'm waiting for that change, at least like every other year, in 2016 there were always plenty of good books around to get lost in.

I only ended up reading about 65 books this year. To some that might seem like a lot, but to others that is a pittance of a number. My goal had been about 80, so 81% of my goal isn't all that bad. If I were still in school that would be a solid B-...which leaves a lot of room for improvement (I'm looking at you 2017). I was going over all the books I read this year and I decided that handing out some bookish themed awards was in order. So without further adieu, I present to you My 2016 Book Awards!! 

 Favorite Fantasy: The Keeper of the Mist by Rachel Neumeier 

Best Love Story: The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon (Not gonna lie I cried a little bit...but only a little bit)

The Worst Love Story: Recreated by Colleen Houck (three love interests do not make for a good book)

Favorite Diverse Book: Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee

The Book I wanted to read again almost immediately after finishing the last page: The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

Favorite Last Book in a series: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Favorite Fairy Tale retelling: Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Best Worst Book: Remembrance by Meg Cabot

Most Informative and Fascinating Non-fiction Book: We Are All Stardust by Stefan Klein

The Book I most wished to chuck across the room: The Heir and the Spare by Emily Albright (It had a British flag on the cover, so of course I had to read it and I immediately regretted it)

The Book I would let my cats use as a bed/scratching post/whatever else a cat would and could do to a book: One Day by David Nicholls

The prettiest Book that you read mostly because it was pretty: Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine

The Greatest Science Fiction Novel of the year: Morning Star by Pierce Brown 

A Book you surprisingly liked after giving it a second chance: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Most Disappointing Book this year: Lady Renegades by Rachel Hawkins (this book series had so much promise and I thought the last book just ended kind of flat)

A Book With a Terrible Cover that is Actually Worth Reading: Julia Vanishes by Catherine Egan

Best Listening a.k.a. Fav, Audio Book: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan (to be honest it was the only audio book I listened to this year, but if I had listened to more I still probably would have picked it as the best) 

A Second Book in a series that was way better than the first: A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas 

A Book You Wish Didn't Exist: Little Women and Me by Lauren Baratz-Logsted (so awful, just ugh)

A Book that made you think: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (So bloody freakin' good!)

A Book you wish you had written: A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab 

A Book to take on vacation: Dreamology by Lucy Keating

A Book that made you happy: Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane

The Worst YA Book Title Challenge!

1.    The _______________ of _______________.

2.    The Summer of ________________.

3.    The __________________.

4.    The ______________ Games.

5.    Throne of ________________.

6.    The _______________ in our ___________________.

7.    _______________ & ________________.

8.    _______________________.

9.    The _________________ _________________.

10.  Looking for _________________.

11.  City of _____________________.

12.  We Were ___________________.

13.  Harry Potter and the ______________________ of _____________________.

14.  If I __________________.

15.  A _____________ in __________________.

16.  _________________ Me.

17.  The _________________ Throne.

18.  This ________________ .

19.  The _________________ Thief.

20.  The Lord of the _________________.

Magicians        Break/ing            Baboon        Darkness        Fire        Pastry  

Queen          Books            Laughing           Red          Burn/ing           Pokemon

Love             Ugly            Awful        Winter           Tamborine      Star       Ship

Beautiful        Golden/Gold             Cute         Winner         Lettuce          Wars

Angel            Time             Inconsiderate         Race/s        Kill/ing          Peace

Clockwork         Gods         Jerk          White        Son          Keeper/s          Soul

Potato             Hope/less            Holes       Orphan       Daughter        Storm

Bananas    Hunk/y       Zebra       Prince        Black       Summer        Promise

Cats            Thief            Special        Pizza           Baby       Kind      Sweet      Go

Shadow       Soul/s      Spotted      Music          Cheese        Wolves       Games

Bone          Lost        Snow         Sky        Taco     Little        Infinite      Sweat

Dawn            Battle          Star/s        Butt        Burrito         Big        Doughnuts

City          Princess     Hungry          Everyone       Everything       Blue     Balls

Sea          Fallen         Food         You         Obnoxious     Turtles   Ice/y    Cool

Monsters         Robot/s           Fries        Me         Disgusting        Key    Road

Twilight         Mark/ed         Farted        People      Wizard        Red       Name

Boys           Curse/d              Blood            Creature/s          Nerd/y         Roses

Night            Cure/d           Rain           Hell        Onions        Diary         Curious

Magic          Kiss          Heart        Heaven         Marshmallows     Hot       Poop

Artichoke          Pineapple        Pants       Iron        House     Witch        Space

My Very Late and Incomplete BookTubeAThon Wrap Up!

Just so we all know that this happened, when I typed BookTubeAThon into the post title it automatically changed itself to BookTubeAThong. Let us all take a moment to appreciate the unintended comedic genius of autocorrect.

Now that we got that out of the way, we shall proceed with today's topic: BookTubeAThon!

If you don't know what BookTubeAThon is let me post this helpful video of my TBR from this year:

It probably wasn't that helpful, but you get the gist of it and I'm lazy and will do my utmost best to avoid any unnecessary typing. Maybe I just need to build up my typing muscles.  I think spirit fingers are the solution to this problem. The answer is always spirit fingers (and the limit does not exist).

Now for the answer you've all been waiting for to the question which I haven't actually asked yet...How many books did I actually end up reading during BookTubeAThon?!

Out of the 7 books I had intended to read over the week of BookTubeAThon, I ended up reading 4 of them. Not too shabby in my opinion (there was also the fact that I had to work every single day of that week and had very little time to read that makes this seem like a slightly more impressive number).

Here are the books I had intended to read:

1. Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories by Stephanie Perkins

2. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

4. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1) by Seth Grahame-Smith/Jane Austen

5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

6. The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4) by Maggie Stiefvater

7. Morning Star (Red Rising, #3) by Pierce Brown

Here are the books I actually read:

1. Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories by Stephanie Perkins

2. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

4. One Day by David Nicholls

5. And the bare beginnings of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, while eating a burrito in a park during my work break.

Now almost three weeks later I have fully finished reading Wuthering Heights and I'm halfway through with Morning Star! It's taking me almost a month, but I am going to finish this challenge gosh dangit! (Hopefully with another burrito. And chips and guac. Mmm.)

Summer Days & Summer Nights is a collection of short stories written by current, popular, young adult authors. I admit I skipped a few of the stories because not all of them were...that great. But a lot of them were really enjoyable! It can be difficult to write an amazing short story because everything achieved in an average sized book has to be condensed into a short and concise format. Flowery language and long ass descriptions do not cut it in a short story. There is also a lack of quality short stories because frankly they are just not as popular and therefore not a lot of them good, bad or otherwise exist (most books these days turn into series and for some reason that usually means there are at least 6 of them, at the minimum...I'm not bitter). So it's refreshing to read something short once in a while.  I noticed the shorts with fantasy elements tended to be better, but that could just be because I think a little bit of magic makes most things better. I will give you a list of the authors whose stories I enjoyed the most in this book (I realize it's pretty much all the big names, but hey they're big for a reason). The list goes Stephanie Perkins, Cassandra Clare, Leigh Bardugo, Veronica Roth, and Lev Grossman. I surprisingly really enjoyed Lev Grossman's story (mostly because some of his other books I wasn't as big of a fan of). It just goes to show that authors can surprise you and it's good to give writers second chances (and third chances and sometimes fourth chances).

Tiger Lily was a dream. This book was a retelling of the story of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. The unique thing about this book was the perspective. It was told through the eyes of Tinker Bell who had taken a liking to Tiger Lily and decided to follow her around. Instead of the secondary character status Tiger Lily and Tink get in the original, in this story they are given a sense of depth and life that makes me love the world of Peter Pan and Neverland even more than I did before. The Neverland in this version was a dark and unforgiving world, yet still a place made of dreams. We get a glimpse of a Peter Pan with extreme flaws, but it's hard to not to still fall in love with his character right alongside Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily. It's the first time a retelling has made me wish for a different outcome in the original source material. That's how you know a retelling has been done right.  Retellings can sometimes be a complete and utter disaster or at times even better than the original. I don't think Tiger Lily was better than Peter Pan, but it did give me that same feeling of nostalgia that I usually end up feeling by the end of this story and That. Is. Everything.

Station Eleven was terrifying, but I loved it. It was such an incredibly unique story. The premise of this book is that there is a time before and a time after civilization. The world was rocked by a deadly flu epidemic that killed a vast majority of the human populace. It was so easy to see the possibly of this happening in real life. That was what I found terrifying. The story jumped through time and was a layered perspective from characters that all had known at some point or another a famous actor named Arthur Leander who died on stage in the middle of a production of Macbeth the night of the beginning of the the end of the world. This story highlights the amazing resilience of the human race and leaves you with the reminder that even when the worse happens, in the end there is always still hope.

I had intended to read another book for this category, which was to read a book and then watch it's movie counterpart, but I had been meaning to read this book and decided to switch it up. I had picked One Day up one day (harhar) at a used book sale. It had been sitting on my shelf ever since and I had always planned to watch the movie at some point or another, so it seemed like a good idea to read/watch it now. Except it wasn't. I mean, I liked some parts, but I had a hard time with this book. I found the characters awful and I knew there was a non happy ending to this book and that probably ruined it for me from the start. This book relied heavily on shock factor, which I find rather unappealing unless it's done well (which in my opinion, it was not in this book). I was getting so bored by the pretentious attitudes of these characters that I decided to watch the movie before I had even finished the book. It made the story somewhat better actually. The actors slightly saved the annoying nature of the text based version of the characters. I hadn't even gotten to the "shocking" part of the story in the book yet and in the first scene in the movie I correctly guessed what was going to happen (of course while thinking that it was stupid and that can't possibly be what happens and then it turns out it does...). I will admit, even though I mostly didn't like the story, it did hold an element of reality that cannot be denied. Random things out of our control happen all the time in life and things don't turn out exactly as we expect them too when we're young and idealistic. That's what saved the story for me in the end. It was also really fun to read and watch the book and movie versions back to back. Highly recommend trying this to anyone who hasn't yet done this before.

I never thought I'd say this, but I actually liked Wuthering Heights. I remember trying to read it before, getting half way through and thinking it was terrible and writing it off as a lost cause. Lesson learned, give classics another chance, especially when you're older. It can be hard to appreciate a book sometimes when you're being forced to read it for a class. I found the characters unlikable still of course, but it gave me the important realization that just because you don't like a character, it doesn't mean it's a bad book. I need to work on this judgement when reading.

Alrighty, this is where I'll stop.  I believe that the next two books deserve whole entire posts of their own, so I will leave it at this. Thanks for reading my thoughts on these books and let me know if you agree or disagree with me! Reading marathons are cool. Books are cool. You're cool :)

Don't Force Yourself To Read

The dreaded book slump.

An ode to book slumps: Oh, how I loathe thee. The end.

There is a stack of books next to my bed about 8 books high that sits there night after night. It sits there mocking me, I just know it. Gloating at my inability to pick up the first book off that pile and start reading! I don't know why or how it happens, but sometimes I just don't feel like reading. It creeps up on me and takes me unawares. Usually after I've been on a really good reading streak and then WHAM! BAM! I'm no longer in the mood to read.

I think it's good to take breaks every once in a while (I know to a reader this sounds sacrilegious, but just hear me out). There exists the saying that there can be too much of a good thing. Overindulge in something and your enjoyment of that thing decreases exponentially. Who knows why! It's one of those glorious attributes that comes along with being human. But I know for me that if I'm not in the mood to read I shouldn't force myself because I won't enjoy a book as much that way. It's possible to get burned out on stories and I do not want that to happen. Taking a break can be healthy. The only thing that won't be good is the library fine that will accrue if I don't start making my way through that pile of books by my bedside really soon...I'm really good at supporting my local library.

(Mind you my book slump has only been about 5 days long, but for a person who reads everyday, that's a really long time!)

The lesson today kids is take breaks, read for fun, love books and they will love you back (in an inanimate object sort of way, of course).

Sometimes, when in a reading slump, all books resemble the Monster Book of Monsters.

THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE

Where does a girl who can live anywhere, in anytime, call home?

Nix grew up a traveler.  The high seas on her father's ship has always been her home, but she has never been bound to just one world.  As long as there existed a map of a land, whether from myth or history, her father was able to take them there through the swirling fog of time to find their next adventure.  Nix is an expert on maps, but there is one map she has dreaded finding her entire life and it is the one her father is most intent on getting.

1868, Honolulu.  

The one place Nix could have called home, could also spell her doom.

I was worried for a moment when I first picked up this book that it was going to be exactly like another book that came out recently, which coincidentally featured both boats and time travel (Passenger by Alexandra Bracken).  Not that there is a problem with having more than one book about both these things, especially when put together.  But it's not the best of times when you feel like you're reading the same rehashed story, but with slightly different characters.

Fortunately, I did not find this a problem.  They both approached the topic of time travel in unique ways and focused on different aspects of the possibilities that arise when coasting on the waves of time.

The focus in The Girl From Everywhere was not so much on the technicalities behind time travel.  Instead cultural exploration was a much more integral part of the storyline, which I found incredibly fascinating.  A big focus of the story involved the historical transition that spelled the end of the Hawaiian Monarchy and the beginning of America's governmental take-over of the island nation.  It was incredibly evident in the story how familiar the author was with the setting.  Her lush depictions of island life made for a very transportive read.  Definitely felt a few island breezes blowing through my hair, but that could have been because of my open window.

The relationship between Nix and her father was another really interesting aspect of the story. Her father's obsession with Nix's mother really took an emotional toll on Nix's own view on relationships. The trust between parent and child is really tested and explored throughout this novel in a unique way that only the possibility of time travel could allow.  

My only complaint in the whole book was the inclusion of random mythological side stories and journeys that seemed more of a stretch in the dark rather than extremely necessary to the progression of the plot.  It added more confusion to the story and seemed a bit out of place.  At the end it becomes clear why such events had to happen, but to me there could have been a better way to do it that didn't make the reader feel like they had suddenly jumped ship out of the story and were reading something completely different than they had been a moment ago.

My overall feeling at the end: GIVE ME MORE BOOKS ABOUT TIME TRAVELING BOATS PLEASE.  That is all.

Top 5 BAs In Books!

The BA, the notorious, inspirational, and wonderful Badass. There's nothing I love more than a character who's fierce, loyal, and determined to right wrongs and kick some serious butt along the way. A badass is true to themselves and doesn't let anybody stand in their way.

Here are my top 5 literary badasses that I would always want on my kick ass lit. squad!

5. Pippi Longstocking

Pippi Longstocking is a girl who can take care of herself.  She's an independent firecracker and extremely loyal to her friends, animals, and lovable, but mostly absent, sea-faring father.  She believes in others and herself with her whole heart and I gained much inspiration as a youngster from reading about her fantastic adventures and seeing the world from her optimistic point of view.  And most importantly, you can't forget about her amazing super strength and those gravity defying braids!

(picture of me as Pippi for Halloween one year)

4. Jacky Faber

Jacky Faber is a pirate through and through.  If she's not sailing on the high seas than she isn't living.  Jacky's adventures encompass an entire 12 books!  She's sassy, dramatic, and not afraid to don a costume or speak her mind in order to save herself and her friends (and sometimes just for a little bit of fun).  I've never met a character quite like Jacky, but I definitely know that if you ever need help or a ride, she's the girl to call.  But maybe just keep her away from gold.  Some things can be too tempting, especially to a pirate.

3. Hermione Granger

The brightest witch of her age and knows how to throw a good punch!  Hermione proves that being smart can be an extremely powerful weapon.  She's prepared for anything and has about 10 plans to save the world and improve the education system up her sleeve at all times.  She will always, before anything else, stand by her friends.

2. Linh Cinder  

Cinder can fix just about anything.  She's a tough, cyborg mechanic who's not afraid to take on any job, even if it means being branded an outlaw and accidentally spearheading a revolution.  Hey, it happens now and again.  Her sarcastic wit and determination makes Cinder a force to be reckoned with and someone who'd always have your back.

1. Celaena Sardothien

Celaena Sardothien is the epitome of a badass.  Her name is the first one that comes to mind when the terms badass and books are ever mentioned in the same sentence.  She's an assassin with a sweet teeth who's strong, tough, viciously loyal and never surrenders in a fight.  She can hold a grudge, but she also has the  ability to forgive those who she has misunderstood in the past, although this can be a rare occurrence.  It is overall wise just not to cross Celaena in the first place.  She is a survivor and has faced unbearable odds that have only made her stronger.