Read-your-bookshelf-a-thon WRAP-UP

Alright, so the readathon was over last night and I definitely didn’t get to read as much as I’d hoped but I still read more than I usually do in even two weeks, so I’ll still call it a success. Read my last post about the readathon. 

If you don’t feel like reading that post, in this readathon you pick a spot on your bookshelf and read as many books you can following that book, and you’re allowed to skip a book in a series if you hit a series.

My bookshelf looks like this and I decided to start at The Ask and the Answer and continue onto the shelf next to this one. 

What I ended up reading was:

The last 200 or so pages of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, even though that’s actually book number 5 on the list. I’d started it before the readathon so I figured I’d just finish it on the first day and count it. [My review]

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (517 pages). This is the second book in the Chaos Walking series, you can read my review of the first book here. A review of this one will be up shortly, but I gave it 4/5 stars. 

I decided to skip Monsters of Men for this readathon because it’s so long (and you’re allowed to skip books in a series as long as you read one of them), so I went on to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (295 pages). I’ll be reviewing this soon too, but I gave it 3/5 stars. It was all right, definitely humorous, but it lacked a little here and there for me. 

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I got 119 pages into this one before the readathon ended, so I haven’t finished it yet. This far I like it a lot better than Fangirl, you can read my review of that one here. 

If my calculations are correct I read a total of 1114 pages this readathon. 

Have you participated in any readathons lately? How did it go? 

Top 5 Wednesday #3 | Banned/Challenged Books I’ve Read

Top 5 Wednesday was created by gingerreadslainey. If you want to join Top 5 Wednesday take a look at the Goodreads group!

It’s Banned Books Week, so naturally this week’s topic is “banned books you’ve read”. Free the books!

(Titles take you to the book’s Goodreads page)

Banned and challenged books

5. THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER (stephen chbosky)

I found this book pretty meh, but it’s been challenged and banned so many times through the years that I figured I’d put it on the list anyway. And all my other picks will be YA so it will fit the running theme. I don’t know, I guess there’s too much drugs and sexual content and scary homosexual characters in this book. 

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4. THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (john green)

Pulled from the shelves because of crude language, teens dying of cancer and teens having sex. Also teen love stories are inappropriate for the teen audience, apparently. [source] 

I quite liked The Fault in Our Stars when I read it and you can do nothing but laugh at hysterical parents. 

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3. THE GIVER (Lois Lowry)

It seems like it was only challenged by some parents because of various reasons like “adolescent pill-popping, suicide, and lethal injections given to babies and the elderly”, but I’m still gonna say it counts. [source p. 5] 

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2. THE HUNGER GAMES (Suzanne collins)

“Challenged and presented to the Goffstown, N.H. school board (2010) by a parent claiming that it gave her eleven-year-old nightmares and could numb other students to the effects of violence. ” [source p. 5]

It wasn’t banned either, only challenged, at least at that particular school, but I still laugh. Imagine wanting to ban a book because it gave your child nightmares. I guess my parents should have just gone ahead and sued R.L. Stine for scarring me for years to come when it came to masks and guest bedrooms. But if I remember correctly, Goosebumps was also banned several places so…

1. HARRY POTTER (J.K. Rowling)

So we all know about Harry Potter being banned because of witchcraft and whatnot. It’s both hilarious and sad. Poor children. 

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What do you think about book banning? 

Review: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Published by Penguin Random House UK
in 2015
Pages: 303
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBTQIA, Romance
Buy: Amazon | Book Depository
Rating:

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So this is one I’ve been looking forward to read ever since I heard about it, and I wasn’t disappointed. 

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda is about Simon, a closeted gay teenager, and his online relationship with the mysterious Blue. Simon doesn’t know who Blue is, but he knows they go to the same school and he knows that he likes him and that they can tell each other things they don’t tell anyone else. Then a guy from school happens to see Simon and Blue’s emails to each other and begins to blackmail Simon, forcing Simon to become his wingman or else both Simon and Blue will be outed. 

This review will talk about Blue’s identity, so if you haven’t read this book yet then please skip that part. I will warn you before that part comes. 

This book is cute. Dangerously so. I’m so weak for plots like this one, there are a lot of them in the fanfiction world but not too many in the published world (I don’t think). The emails between Simon and Blue are adorable and funny and overall just very believable. The dialogue and the voice in this book definitely speaks teenager, complete with teenage vocabulary of today like “I can’t even.” They even use Tumblr. Simon’s school has one of those awful anonymous “secrets” blogs, you know what I’m talking about. Only drama comes out of those but damn if they’re not addictive. Anyway, while the book reads like teenager, I didn’t find it annoying (as someone who is not a teenager anymore) and that’s a big plus. 

While the blackmail aspect of this book sounds quite angsty, it’s actually pretty light in the angst department. There’s a lot of humor in this book and the way Simon kinda sorta became friends with Martin, his awkward blackmailer, was very funny. 

Maybe he’s my blackmailer. Maybe he’s also becoming my friend. Who the hell knows if that’s even allowed.

One part of Simon vs that I really liked was how I could identify with the part of Simon that hates “coming out” and I’m not talking about sexuality here, but just in general. He hates feeling like everything new he does is a big deal to everyone, and I just feel that so much, it actually surprised me when I read that because I thought I was alone in that. I guess adults can learn something from YA novels, take that, book snobs! To show you what I mean I’ll add this quote below that resonated with me so much. 

But I’m tired of coming out. All I ever do is come out. I try not to change, but I keep changing, in all these tiny ways. I get a girlfriend. I have a beer. And every freaking time, I have to reintroduce myself to the universe all over again.

My mind was a little bit blown when I read that, to be honest. 

Hmm, what else. Oh yes, Blue.

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SPOILERS BELOW!

I read some reviews where people were surprised to find out who Blue was and some that had figured it out. I had definitely figured it out. I knew it wouldn’t be who Simon thought it was (even though Cal is adorable) because come on, we all know how mysteries work, and I knew it probably wasn’t Nick, and Martin wouldn’t make sense. So when Blue told Simon in an email that he goes all silent when he talks to guys in real life I had a main suspect, and I was right. That scene in the classroom was the give-away and the hints kept proving my theory. 

END SPOILERS!

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So yes, I was definitely a fan of the mystery aspect of this book, even if I figured it out early on. The final scenes were just too cute and all in all the word to describe this book is CUTE. This was a great debut novel, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for other books by Albertalli. 

Have you read this book? Are you going to? Did you guess Blue’s identity? 

Read-Your-Bookshelf-A-Thon TBR!

I’ve been debating back and forth on whether or not to join this readathon, but at 2AM last night I decided to just go for it. I believe it was originally created by BooKss101 over on YouTube. One of the hosts this time around is one of my favorite booktubers, Catriona from Little Book Owl, so you can watch her video here. 

The readathon is hosted from Sep 22nd  to Sep 29th.

The idea is that you pick a spot on your bookshelf, and read as much as you can in that direction. You can skip a book in a series, but I believe you have to read at least one book in whatever series it is. 

MY READS

I’m sorry in advance for my bad iPhone 4 pictures, ugh. 

I decided to start with my library books, because they have to be returned soon anyway. So I’ll start on The Ask and the Answer and then I might read Monsters of Men, but maybe I’ll skip it and read it next week instead. 

This is the shelf right next to the other one, so I’ll continue with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Eleanor & Park, Attachments, and The Girl with All the Gifts, but I doubt I’ll get that far, I have some other things I need to do this week. I just finished Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda at 4AM last night, so maybe I’ll count it as part of the readathon. I’ll review it later this week probably. 

So, this is my first proper readathon, very exciting! 

Anyone else doing this readathon? What do you think of my books? 

Blogger Recognition Award

I was tagged for the Blogger Recognition Award by Rabbit Ears Productions Blog, thank you so much for that! It was originally created by Edge of Night. I’m a bit late with this and I have a few other tags and awards to post, but don’t worry, I’m not ignoring you if you’ve tagged me for something, I’m just a bit slow!

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Rules:

• Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to. Do some digging if you must! Find those blogs. You cannot nominate yourself or the person who has nominated you.
• Write a post to show off your award! Give a brief story of how your blog got started, and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog. List who you’ve nominated in the post. 
• Make sure to also attach the award itself
• Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them. Provide a link to the award post you created.
• Provide a link to the original post on Edge of Night.

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Book Traveling Thursday #5 | A Book with My OTP

It’s Thursday and time for another Book Traveling Thursday. This weekly meme was created by Cátia @ The Girl Who Read Too Much and Danielle @ Danielle’s Book Blog. Visit their Goodreads group to learn more about Book Traveling Thursday 🙂

The rules are to share covers related to the weekly theme where you include the original cover, the cover from your country, your favorite, and your least favorite.

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This week’s theme is a book with your OTP in it. For those who might not know for some reason, OTP stands for One True Pairing, that one couple you love more than anything else. 

So my OTP is actually Ron and Hermione, especially when it comes to books. I’ll be very impressed the day anything tops that. But because I’m an idiot who doesn’t read ahead what the topics are, I did a Harry Potter book last week. So because I don’t feel like doing another one this week I’ll have to pick another book. 

I don’t often fall hard for any pairings in books, not the same way I do with TV shows. But maybe I haven’t read enough books with really good couples in them, I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll go with Caine and Diana from Michael Grant’s GONE series. I don’t remember exactly what happened in which book, but I’ll go with the third book, Lies.

These two are really messed up, both of them. If you read my favorite fictional characters post you know my weakness for that stuff. This is a really really dysfunctional couple but they love each other the best they can, and that’s why I was intrigued by them when I read these books a couple years ago. 

Favorite Fictional Characters

I got bored and decided to make a list because everyone loves lists and everyone loves fictional characters.

This will be about favorite characters overall, not just in books, but tv shows too. Mostly tv shows to be honest. I chose not to include movies because there are just too many movies to choose from.

Here they are in no particular order. Though the first one is my number one favorite.  

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MICKEY MILKOVICH (SHAMELESS US)

This right here is my number one love. I can’t even express it, I just ashjhjkhvsdfg. What a perfect character, what a good actor. While I side-eye the writers’ treatment of him at the end of season 5, I still love him and his character development has been one of the best that I’ve seen on TV. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole in real life, but ugh, what a wonderful character, you deserve so much more screentime, darling. 

Fiona Gallagher is also one of my favorite characters but I’m trying to limit myself to one character per book/show.

(Gif source: myself)

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Helena (ORPHAN BLACK)

Okay, so all of the clones are wonderful, but Helena has a special place in my heart. Alison too, but I chose to only include Helena on this list.

I love messed up characters and this Angry Angel is definitely one of those. She’s murderous and feral, but childish and so cute. And her role in the “found family” trope I live for makes me want to scream. So great. Helena and Sarah’s relationship is one of my favorites on TV. 

What a coincidence that both characters this far are Ukrainian.

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My feelings for Helena (and Mickey too for that sake) can be summed up by this gif:

(Helana gif source: chloebennetsgf
Don’t know the source of the Mushu gif, it’s the kind everyone uses as a reaction gif)

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Dean Winchester (SUPERNATURAL)

Supernatural has been one of my favorite shows ever since it started, it’s been with me for such a long time and I love it and I love Dean. It doesn’t matter what happens to the show, Dean will always be a favorite character. 

Somehow I actually ended up having a bit to catch up on, so no spoilers about the last half of the last season! 

(Gif source: supernaturaldaily)

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