Book Traveling Thursday (25) | Favorite 2016 Read

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. I’ve decided to go for a top 3 and bottom 3 arrangement, because that’s more fun and I get to showcase more covers. 

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This week’s theme is “It’s almost the end of the year… Choose one of your favorite books of 2016!” I have to pick a book that I read in 2016, not a book that came out in 2016 as I don’t think I’ve read a lot of new releases. And I just really wanted to do this book, ok. I went with The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater. I just found it to be such a beautiful book, it took me completely by surprise. It was so much more complex than I’d thought it would be. I’m dying to continue the series. 

 I actually dislike this one quite a bit. I think it’s the font on the author’s name that really cheapens the look.

August – November 2016 Wrap-Up

Me? Slow? Nah, never. Here’s all the books I read between August and November. I didn’t read all that much, but it’s something. 

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
by John Tirfany, Jack Thorne & J.K. Rowling

Spoiler alert. I finished this as soon as I bought it and while I loved it, I also didn’t? I loved the nostalgic factor and I loved seeing all my favorites again. I loved Albus and Scorpius’ relationship (Scorpius is a precious cinnamon roll) and I loved Draco and Harry being friendly towards each other. And seeing Ron and Hermione again made me super emotional. But I also thought it was messy and clichè, and the time travel plot was kind of eh. I didn’t buy the whole thing with the daughter. When did Bellatrix and Voldie do the do? 

3/5 stars (5 for the nostalgic and enjoyment factor, but 3 for plot)

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The Girl on the Train
by Paula Hawkins

I listened to this on audio and I really loved two of the narrators, the third not so much. I thought this was interesting and pretty compelling, although it was predictable. 

4/5 stars

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This Savage Song
by V.E. Schwab

Thinking back on this book, not much stands out. There are monsters, a human girl and a monster boy, and some sort of feud between humans and monsters. It’s good, but not great. What I did love though was how the different monsters are created/formed. I thought that was very inventive, plus it kind of makes sense (in the fantasy way, of course). I also like that there’s no romance despite the Romeo and Juliet-like plot. 

3/5 stars

 

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The Shining
by Stephen King

I’ve been a slow reader lately, but I devoured this despite its size. I loved it. I wasn’t that creeped out by it (except a few parts, but that could be because I was reading it out on the balcony in the sun) but I was still fully into it anyway. After I finished it I watched the movie, which I’ve never seen before, because everyone’s always talking about how it’s the best horror movie ever. And I just have to say… WHAT? It was terrible??? It didn’t make sense and it was so weak compared to the book. I hate how the movie only focuses on Jack being crazy, instead of the hotel being evil. There’s no character development, and the movie doesn’t even EXPLORE THE SHINING FOR MORE THAN TWO SECONDS? I don’t know what Stephen King thinks of it but I hope he hates it too, because it butchered his characters (including the hotel). And there are no hedge animals. Yikes. 

5/5 stars

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Ridiculously Bad, What a Trainwreck: Shatter Me by Tehereh Mafi [REVIEW]

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
First published in November 2011 by HarperCollins
Tags: Young Adult, Dystopia, Romance
Buy: Amazon | Book Depository | B&N 
Source: Purchased (eBook)
Rating:

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war – and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

I’m the most sporadic blogger ever right now, I’m sorry about that. I really need to get to reviewing all these books I’ve been reading these past few months though, so here’s to trying.

I apologize in advance to everyone who loves this book and/or this series. Nothing against you, just a lot against this book.

I read Shatter Me in June, so it’s quite a long time ago, but even though I don’t remember every detail of the plot (it wasn’t memorable to begin with) I still remember how reading it made me feel.

As you can probably tell by the rating, I couldn’t stand this book. I hated it in that trainwreck kind of way, you just can’t look away because it’s that terrible. It’s so terrible that it made reading it hilarious. This might be one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. The writing style cracked me up several times, I still can’t believe what I read was real.

The metaphors. Oh god the metaphors. The writing style in general. So awful. You just can’t make this shit up. Some find it poetic, I found it pretentious, over the top, and fake deep. Most of the time they do not even MAKE SENSE!!! For a metaphor/simile to be good it HAS TO MAKE SENSE.