Book Blogger Hop #6/Follow my book blog Friday #3

Good morning all! Tis time for us to get our springy shoes on!!

The Book Blogger hop is weekly event hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books where bloggers get together to discover awesome new blogs they've not seen before.

Follow my Book Blog Friday is another weekly event hosted by Rachel at Parajunkee's View. Here are her simple rules for the event.

To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers -
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post! 

This Week's question for the Hop - "Do you listen to music when you read? If so what are your favourite reading tunes?"

Short answer, no. Unless the music I'm listening to has no words it's very likely to distract me while I'm reading because I'm one of those people who can't help but sing along to normal music. I usually just have silence when I'm reading cos it's peaceful and calming. If I was to have music playing it'd probably be a movie soundtrack cos I'm addicted to those and I have a few with no words.

So I hope everyone is having a great Friday and I look forward to hopping round some awesome blogs later today. Please comment and follow as you choose :)

Laters

LadyV

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Book Review - Linger

I should have done this last week but I didn't so I'm getting it done now while I have some time.

Title: Linger
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Date: 26/7/2010 PM
Source: Bought
Description: Their eyes, human eyes in wolf skulls, remind me of water: the clear blue of water reflecting the spring sky, the brown of a brook churning with rainfall, the green of the lake in summer as the algae begins to bloom, the gray of a snow-choked river. It used to be only Sam's yellow eyes that watched me from between the rain-soaked birches, but no, I feel the weight of the entire pack's gaze. The weight of things known, things unsaid. (Taken from Goodreads)
My Review: It's needless to say that I was *really* super-duper excited to read this after how amazing Shiver was. I devoured the whole book in a few hours but when I finished it I have to say that I preferred Shiver. Now before you right me off as a lunatic (which you'd be quite within your rights to do btw) I'll first explain that it's not that I didn't like Linger, on the contrary I really enjoyed it but there was one rather major thing which annoyed the heck outta me and is the reason why I couldn't give the book 5 stars. 


But first I'll talk about what I liked. Of course Maggie's writing is simply gorgeous like before, she's got a way with description that really puts you right there in Mercy Falls and inside the character's heads. Like I did last time I have to mention how freaking wonderful Sam is, seeing his happiness at being able to spend the winter with Grace as a human is so sweet to read about, his joy at being able to play in the snow without fear of turning back into a wolf makes me smile so much. I also liked how he really stepped up as a leader with Beck being stuck as a wolf and dealt with Cole and Victor and their crazy wolfy problems.


Now I have to rant a little about my one major tiff with this book - Grace's Parents. Seriously what the *hell* was up with them?! In Shiver they were the airy-fairy, insanely hands-off non-parents who didn't care one way or the other that Grace might be doing stuff they don't know about, but in the few months between Shiver and Linger they seem to have morphed into psycho-dictatorial parent-bots. What the feck? What is it about Sam that makes them go from being all nice to him to thinking he's Satan-spawned or something? Just because he's a few months older than Grace doesn't mean he's out only to steal her virtue and then leave her. For crying out loud the guy has been in love with her since he was freaking 12!! I find the whole pissiness about Sam and Grace sleeping together a bit daft because obviously over in Britain the age of consent is 16 not 18 so it would be perfectly alright for them to get all hot 'n' heavy over here so long as they were being sensible with protection and whatnot. And what boggles my mind is how Grace's parents seem determined to ignore the fact that their daughter is the epitome of practicality and would never be quite so stupid as to enter into a physical relationship without taking precautions and knowing that it was what she wanted. 


The fact that her parent's have basically relied on her all these years makes me think that they were feeling threatened by Sam because he represents the future and that Grace will eventually move out and they decided to react like five-year olds who've had their old favourite teddy taken off them. Banning Grace from seeing Sam was such a ridiculous thing to do since their relationship was not having an adverse effect on her school work and it's not like he was keeping her from her friends since she still hung out with Rachel and Isabel, and Olivia is a bloody wolf for all of the book (another slight bugbear, why no mention of Olivia after the scene with her brother?). Their behaviour was totally unreasonable for the seriousness of the situation and was guaranteed to backfire by making Grace act out against them. 


Ok I've complained about that for long enough now. Overall I really enjoyed Linger and I'm super excited to read Forever cos I really want to know what's gonna happen to Grace and Sam. I hope there's more of the other wolves in the last book since we've only ever seen them through Sam's memories, also I want something nasty to happen to Isabel's father because, let's be honest he *really* deserves it :P


My Rating: 4.5 Stars out of 5


So there you go, it's taken me two or three sittings spaced quite far apart to finish it but it's finally done! Now I've just got 12 millions more reviews to do before I'm caught up. Joking I'm *never* gonna be able to catch up on everything I've read but I'm gonna try and review several of my recent reads e.g. By Midnight, Emma and Something Like Fate (I read that last night after my sister finished it)


So I'm gonna haul myself off to bed and try and finish Endless Summer before my sister has a coronary (she's become such a demanding little book monster!).
LadyV

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Booking Through Thursday - First Time

I would have liked to have got this post up earlier but I've been super busy all day what with driving home from my great-auntie's house and then going to help my Gran with some ironing and *then* being dragged along while my sister and mum went to physio and whatnot (thank gawd I grabbed a book to read while we were there)

"What is the first book you remember reading? What about the first made you really love reading?"

I gotta confess that even though I'm not quite 20 my memory of my childhood is so exceedingly poor that I can't remember at all what was the first book I read for myself. I just seem to have been reading all my life and I can't pinpoint when and how it started. I know that I loved Enid Blyton books - like many other people - when I was younger it was more the fairy books but when I was around 7 or 8 I reckon the Secret Seven books were my favourite. I also remember reading this series of books about ballet, I did two years of ballet lessons from when I  was 5 but I've never really been graceful enough or balanced to be a ballerina, but I enjoyed these books nonetheless.

The book that I vividly remember being the catalyst for my reading even more voraciously was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I can't recollect who gave me the book but it was in '97 or 98' not long after it came out and I've probably never been more obsessed with a series of books than with Harry Potter, it literally infected a huge part of my childhood. From when I was 7 until I was 17 I pretty much lived for the release of the next book although during that time I did expand my range of reading quite a bit, I'd not really read much fantasy before Harry (as far as I'm aware, I have no idea unless I go and grill my parents about it) but over that ten years I've read the Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials and lots of other books that-I-can't-remember. I feel rather guilty that it's only been since last December that I've read The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit which I really should have read yonks ago but I can't change the past and I've read them now and that's all that matters.

It is a great shame that I don't remember the *very first* book I ever read and I may have to reminisce with the parentals one day about my reading habits, cos god knows I didn't get my love of books from either of them so I'm rather intrigued to know where it came from. What I would really love to do is go down to my local library, where I've been going for-evah, and ask them if my lending record goes as far back as the mid-90's and if they could actually print me a copy of everything I borrowed cos it would be amazing to see what I read back then and whether I remembered any of them. But I reckon if I did the librarians would look at me pretty funnily *hehe*

All this thinking about my childhood reading has really made me regret giving away all the lovely hardback copies of Roald Dahl books that I had, I'd lost the illustrated dust covers to them years ago but they were in mint condition still (excepting that game of MASH I'd done inside the cover of Matilda - don't ask me *why* I committed sacrilege like that I was a weird child), gah if only I could get them back. *sigh* I'll just have to buy a set of paperbacks for perpetuity and future offspring - who *will* have a love of books beaten into them :P.

Well anyways this has taken me a while and I really need to do some book reviews!
TTFN
LadyV

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Teaser Tuesdays #10

Heello my lovelies, tis time for another Teaser on this fine Tuesday. Now I'm not gonna be around for a couple of days as I'm going to visit some relatives with my sister so this will be scheduled to post before I leave so hopefully maybe I'll have time to post the link on the host site *crosses fingers*

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should be Reading. Anyone can play along, just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "Teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!!
• Share the title and author as well so other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teaser!

My Teaser

"She gasped, her hand jerking to her mouth. There were eyes looking at her. Dark, piercing eyes, staring out from the shadows. She began to back towards the gate, the fox forgotten, but found she could barely move her legs." pg 49 of By Midnight by Mia James 

I've already finished this book and I'm hoping to get a review done by the end of this week.

There'll be no post on Wednesday because I've got nothing scheduled but things are usually pretty quiet here on that day cos I don't do any memes. I will be back maybe on Thursday but the rest of the week is looking to be pretty busy I'm afraid.

See y'all soon

Lady V

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It's Monday What are you Reading (9)

Good morning chaps! Tis jolly good to see you! (ook I don't know what the heck that was all about- sorry)
Well it's Monday again and of course it's time to share what I've read in the last week with y'all.

It's Monday What are you Reading? Is a weekly bookish meme where we get together to share what books we've read in the past week, what books we're currently reading and what new books we're planning on reading in the coming week along with any reviews or interesting posts. It's hosted by Sheila @One Persons Journey through a world of Books

Books I read Last Week

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater (I'm working on a review now)

The Summer I turned Pretty by Jenny Han 

The Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin (Random Re-read)

Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith 

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (Another Random Re-read)

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (Ditto)

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare (notice a pattern yet?)

Prey by Rachel Vincent (Erm probably won't do a review cos of spoilers)

Books I'm Currently Reading

Endless Summer by Jennifer Echols - Yea I know I've been reading this for over a week, I will get it finished this week cos my sister wants it back.

Books I plan on reading this Week

What an excellent question I don't really know. This month I'm hoping to read some other stuff besides the half-ton of YA fiction I've got through in July, I've got a TBR list of nearly 120 so it's not like I'm lacking options but I just don't know what I want to read. I keep wanting to re-read my Tamora Pierce Books but that's no good for the TBR numbers. *predicament*

So Decide for me folks - what genre should I read next? Historical Fiction, Dystopia, Literary Fiction, Fantasy or Classics? I've got bucket-loads of stuff to choose from but no clue on where to start!

Have a great week y'all

LadyV

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July Round-off - WTF? Where did this month go??

Ok seriously, where the fandazzle is this year going?? I can't believe that it's the end of July already, I've been back from Uni for two months now and I feel like I've done nothing (which is technically quite accurate but that's besides the point). I'm gonna be turning freaking 20!! in October and it's getting scarily close now, time needs to stop racing away or I'm not gonna remember 2010 at all.

But anyway I'm rambling about nonsense, so what's happened this past month for me book and blog-wise? Well after I got back from Barbados it took me a week or so to get back into the swing of things so I've not done as many posts as I did in May or June. I'm not quite sure how many reviews I've actually done this month but I reckon it's not much more than 2 *oops*. I've obviously done some of the usual memes, It's Monday, What are you Reading?, Teaser Tuesdays, Booking through Thursday, In My Mailbox and I even got on a Blog Hop once. I had a slightly stress-head moment last week because it had taken me two weeks to write a review for Dreamland by Sarah Dessen and the writer's block was ruddy annoying so I ranted about my lack of motivation to write for several hundred words which seems ironic in hindsight, I can write loads about not being able to write. *facepalm*

I also did several posts about the two days my best friend Jess (Jess Hearts Books) and I spent frolicking around the Midlands in search of books to acquire - and boy were we successful! One of these days I *may* do a post about my trip to Barbados but don't rely on it, cos it'd take a heck of a lot of time to do and I'm on thin ice when it comes to the amount of time I spend on the computer *meep!*

Last week I did a post asking people to give me recommendations for books that my sister would like (YA realism, nothing paranormal) and I did a separate post asking folk if anyone would be interested in doing a guest post on here or if they'd like me to guest post on their blog etc. Links for all these posts will be below.

Books Read in July
107. His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1/7/2010 PM)
108. The Oracle of Dating by Allison van Diepen (7/7/2010 AM)
109. An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris (8/7/2010 AM)
110. Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder (8/7/2010 PM)
111. The Princess and the Pauper by Kate Brian (10/7/2010 AM)
112. Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder (11/7/2010 AM)
113. Dreamland by Sarah Dessen (13/7/2010 AM)
114. A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn (14/7/2010 AM)
115. Cracked up to Be by Courtney Summers (16/7/2010 AM)
116. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (17/7/2010 AM)
117. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman (19/7/2010 AM)
118. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (20/7/2010 AM)
119. Moon Called by Patricia Briggs (22/7/2010 AM)
120. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (26/7/2010 AM)
121. Linger by Maggie Stiefvater (26/7/2010 PM)
122. The Summer I turned Pretty by Jenny Han (27/7/2010 AM)
123. The Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin (28/7/2010 AM)
124. Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith (29/7/2010 PM)
125. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (30/7/2010 PM)
126. City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (31/7/2010 AM)


As you can see by that list I had a very YA orientated month, one Sherlock Holmes book, 3 adult paranormal books and the rest were YA. 7 books were re-reads which is quite bad since I've got over 100 books on my TBR list so I kind of need to make those my priority. 




July in Posts
Reviews
Dreamland by Sarah Dessen - Review Here
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater - Review Here

Meme Posts
It's Monday what are you Reading? - Here and 'Ere
Teaser Tuesdays - Zis one and Zat one
Booking through Thursday - Just this one
Book Blogger Hop/Follow Friday - Numero uno y Numero dos
In My Mailbox - Big Haul and Not so big

Random Posts
Road Trip of Awesome - Day 1, Day 2 and The Conclusion
Call for Guest Bloggers - Please Sir if you would
Call for Book Recommendations - It'd be a big help
Writer's Block Blues - You don't have to look at this

So that was my month, a pretty good one for books although I've not really cleared anything off my TBR cos I've bought more than I read but never mind lol.

August is looking to be a good month, my parents are going away for two weeks and will hopefully be finding me lots of lovely books from Floridian bookstores (I need to compile my list still!), I'm going to be having another meet-up with Jess and Ellie *happy dance* and right at the end of the month I'm gonna be going to London with the darling boyfriend for a few days and I'll be damned if I don't visit the mahussive bookshops there! I'm hoping to read more books off my TBR pile and a wider variety of genres than in July because I feel guilty for neglecting the tons of books in my cupboard.

I also may try and do another set of book shelf tours but this time I'm gonna try and show you folk what hidden in the massive depths of the cupboard (6 shelves stacked four rows deep with several books on top). I may try and borrow my sister's new Flip Camera *oozes with jealousy* to film it although heck knows it'll take a lot of work and I may have to empty the shelves to show you everything.

Anyhow, Here's to August and all it's possibilities!
LadyV

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In My Mailbox #15

Gooood evening folks! I know you'll be reading this on Sunday morning but I'm writing it on Saturday night so forgive the inaccurate greeting. I actually have some books this week that weren't ordered online and arrived *really* late. I went shopping on Thursday and earlier today and I successfully smuggled my illicit purchases into the house with no one the wiser (my parents are getting really ticked off by my book habit and general laziness so I'm probably a few more excessive lie-ins away from getting packed off to Wales for the rest of the summer).
But anyway on with the show! I've got another vlog cos I'm partly lazy and it saves the time of finding and linking the covers in the post.
In My Mailbox is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Kristi @The Story Siren and it was inspired by a post from Alea @Pop Culture Junkie



Books Mentioned in Vlog
Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Ill Wind by Rachel Caine
Heatstroke by Rachel Caine
The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan
The Scarlet Lion by Elizabeth Chadwick

Overall a pretty good week in books, who knows what next sunday will bring y'all shall have to see. Now I'm going to be doing a July round-off post shortly which may be up before this one who knows it'll depend on whether I get it finished tonight or not. Stay Tuned either way for that :)

So what's in *your* mailbox this week?
LadyV

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