Alloria's 2015 Books

Well, I didn't quite make it to 100 last time, but I'll try again this year. It doesn't do me any harm to record the books I read.

Total amount of books

23 Books out of 100

Picture Books

Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock
The Legend of the Windigo
Jumanji
So I'm having a real hard time counting picture books, even if I capped myself at ten or something so I've decided for every fifteen picture books I read it'll count as one book.

Good luck! It's always worth having a goal even if we don't attain it.

Welcome back, and good luck! And remember: it's the journey, and not the destination that counts. :)

Welcome, happy reading !

Thanks everyone :)
1. My first book this year is called Spell Booked, a book my brother got for me for Christmas. Now this probably isn't all that strange but it's the first time I've read a book written in first person of someone older then thirty. The book itself was good but I'm not exactly jumping up and down. It's a mystery but I don't really think there was enough clues to let ME figure out who dun' it except through meta-gaming skills.
But it had a happily married couple. I always support happily married couples.

Deule is probably older than thirty.
...Although, I admit he's not very important to the story he is narrating.

You may be amused to hear that I just read a mystery where a reporter figured out that the heroine was a murder magnet, and threatened to tell the world all about how significant it was that she was involved in so many murders.

Yes I am rather amused to hear that.
Also, I don't now who Deule is... unless he's the narrator in Cantata.

2. Survivors: the Broken Path

So if anyone was following me last year they know I'm in the middle of this series. This one is book four. One thing that's frustrating me is trying to figure out what happened from the human perspective. I'm guessing some nuclear bomb or some other chemical disaster, but I'm not quite sure. It's bugging me a little.

3. Graceling

I really enjoyed it, except I really disagreed with the heroine's view on marriage. She refused to get married, but having a lover is okay. Call me old fashioned but this really irked me. Other then that it was good.

4. Medea

The more I read and hear about the greeks and their stuff the more I'm glad the greeks aren't around anymore.

I had to read this for one of my classes. I love that professor, but I've begun wondering about the plays he's seems to like. Thankfully he's making us read one of Shakespeare's comedies next. A Midsummer's Night Dream. Which apparently takes place in a greek setting. Did not know that before.

>10 Alloria: "Which apparently takes place in a greek setting. Did not know that before."

Well, it's not like it's a "recognizably greek" setting, it's more of a "supposedly greek" setting. >:)

5. The Queen of Attolia

So right before I read this book I tried reading a couple other books and I stopped most of them in the first couple of pages. Then I read this one. Apparently I'm not in the mood for light fluffy stupid romances or dogs running around in the same circles as they have been for the four books (as much as I prefer the Surviovrs series to the Erin Hunter's other books, I think I'm probably not going to finish it). I'm in the mood for war. And I think this book portrayed the war very accurately, though I'm not much of an expert when it comes to that sort of stuff.

This book starts out with a thief getting caught and having his hand cut off by a crazy queen. Yay! It's defiantly way more exciting then most of the stuff I read last year. Seeing that the other book I've gotten through this year is Graceling I figure I must defiantly be in a more action based mood.

While putting this book into Library Thing I discovered it's actually a sequel. I got the feeling that it might have been while reading the book. It might explain some things. If possible I need to find the first one. Maybe it'll explain why in the world the thief is in love with the crazy queen who cut off his queen. Okay, so she's not crazy, but she did cut off his hand.

6. Midsummer's Night Dream

I'm sure it's funnier when you listen to it or watch it performed. Then again, I don't get a kick out of watching people be idiots because they're in love. Especially if said love is induced by love potion. So maybe not. Still, I preferred reading it over some of his tragedies.

7. Alcatraz versus the Knights of Crystallia

Book 3. A very amusing book series, if you like snarky commentary.

8. Murder with Mirrors

The first Agatha Christie book I've read. I have a character who is a detective so I figured I should start reading more mysteries.

9. A View From the Bridge

Another play I had to read for class. I really didn't care for it that much. I'm beginning to see a real problem. I enjoy performing and being apart of the theatre experience, but I don't seem to actually like that many plays... :/ I guess I'm not so fond of things that are suppose to make you think of one thing or another. I just like thinking about what ever I feel like at the moment.

10. The King of Attolia

The third book! The one that follows the Queen of Attolia! I still haven't read the first one. Huh. I really need to do that at some point.

11. Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws

So I've liked most of this author's other books but I only got around to reading this one now because my sister read it and didn't really like it. Having read it I have to agree, it's not one of her better ones.

12. A Conspiracy of Kings

The fourth book! Nope, still haven't read the first one. It was more irksome to read this one without the first one because most of the main cast appears to be most of the main cast in the first book, so they make even more references to the first book. It's not my fault that the I haven't read the first one. The school's library doesn't seem have the first one, and for certain reasons I can't request things at the local library right now.

But I do recommend the series, I just also recommend reading the first book first.

13. Timelines: Noble Blood

This is a book my friend is writing. It's a good story, but she needs to hammer out the writing some.

14. The Importance of Being Earnest

Ah, Oscar Wilde... I infinitely prefer this then The Picture of Dorian Gray which I was forced to read my freshmen year of High School

15. Scarlet

Will Scarlet is actually a girl, and there's a love triangle with Robin and John. This is not a spoiler because it basically said so in the book description. I picked up the book with the full expectation to laugh at the whole set up, and while I did do that it was better then I thought. It does suffer from a recent trend I've been noticing amongst heroines of late.

You will have a heroine. The authors wants her to be an uber awesome fighter who can kick anyone's but and wipe the floor with those arrogant men. All well and good. But wait! You want your heroines to have a moral compass, and set of rules she abides by. You want her to be awesome enough that she can totally kill if she wants, but you don't want her to be a killer. So you have this backstory where she used to be a killer or something, but she's tired of it, or something changes her mind, and she has mended her ways and she no longer kills, instead choosing the higher moral ground of just letting them write in pain.

Now Scarlet in this book does not kill. Or at least, she didn't in her past. She does kill some people in the book, and it kind of disturbs her when she does. The fact she was just a thief rather then a killer made me a lot warmer to her then I probably would have in other circumstances.

I think finding a balance between having characters who are capable of defending and fighting for themselves and having a properly morale character is difficult. It bothers me when no one gets killed because that's unrealistic. It bothers me when everyone gets killed because of that lack of morality. Basically, I'm super hard to please when it comes to this issue.

16. Alcatraz versus the Shattered Lens

The fourth book in the Alcatraz! This one has a slightly more serious tone then the others because Alcatraz ends up in a war zone, but it was still lots of fun. Eventually, the fifth book will be written, but who knows when that will happen...

Ooh, that Scarlet book sounds rather fun. I was a huge fan of robin hood as a kid, will have to check that out.

And while I like watching plays (and tv shows, any sort of good scripted drama, really), I find them hard to read.

I agree, they are much harder to read. A lot of the humor comes from how the lines are said.

17. Fairest

Yay, I always wanted to read about a how a villainess got to where she was... not.
This is the prequel book for the Lunar Chronicles. I've always been kind of annoyed at the book for existing because originally the fourth book Winter was supposed to come out in February but instead this book came out and Winter got pushed until November. And I'm not very fond of villain stories. It was barely any fun. But, supposedly, there was something in there that greatly effects how Winter turns out. I don't have any clue what that is, but I'm sure once I've read Winter I'll appreciate what ever that thing is.

Unless it's Queen Levanna turning good. I would really hate that. Fortunately, it doesn't look like it'll be the kind of series.

18. Lady Thief

The sequel to Scarlet. This book defiantly suffered some from Second Book Syndrome, but there's a third book that's either out or coming out this year so it should all be alright.

19. Nightbird

20. Splintered

Alyssa is the great-whatever daughter of the Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Because of that insanity seems to run in her family. She has it too. She can hear bugs and plants. However in a visit to her mother in the asylum she figures out that the voices aren't a delusion, but rather a curse that her family has been subject too ever sense Alice went into Wonderland.
To saver herself and her mother from the curse she goes and jumps into the rabbit hole, accidentally dragging her overprotective crush, where she is guided by a mysterious native of Wonderland with wings that speaks into her dreams. Because every YA books needs a love triangle. It's like an unspoken rule.

I liked how they turned Wonderland into a fae realm of sorts, and I liked some of the ideas and imagery in the book. I'm just not sure what I think of the book as a whole. If you like creepy stuff this is right down your alley.

21. My Fairly Dangerous Godmother

I didn't quite think this one was quite as good as good as the other Fair Godmother books that Janette Rallison did, but I did enjoy it. This one features Little Mermaid and Twelve Dancing Princesses as the fairytales that the heroine gets dumped into.

22. The Blood of Olympus

Well I enjoyed it. I think it was a good end for the series, though I felt the pacing was off slightly. They didn't really have room for transitions.

23. The Shifter

Well, it's not my favorite book but I thought it was interesting. There are these magic stones that hold pain, and there are people, called Takers and Healers (depending on how trained they are) who can take pain from people (and if they're trained, cure the ailment as well) and put them into these magic pain holding rocks, which can then be enchanted to be weapons who shoots people with pain when you clonk them over the head. It was an interesting case of supply and demand.