March in Retrospect

I actually managed to read a couple of books and novellas this month! Thank you Spring Break and Julie Kagawa's exciting Iron Fey series, lol. Unfortunately, I've been so busy and distracted with other entertainment that I haven't even picked up the next book in the series since I read the last volume. :\ Oh well, hopefully I will be motivated to read again soon. :P

I read:

• The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
• The First Kiss by Julie Kagawa
• Winter's Passage by Julie Kagawa
• The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
• The Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa
• Summer's Crossing by Julie Kagawa

I reviewed:

• The Nine Lives of Chloe King by Celia Thomson

I watched:

• Aziz Ansari Live at Madison Square Garden (2015)
• A Company Man (2012)
• K-POP Extreme Survival (2012)
• You're All Surrounded (2014)
• Mulan (1998)
• Independence Day (1996)

Book Review: The Fallen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #1) by Celia Thomson

Title: The Fallen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #1)
Author: Celia Thomson
Pages: 256
Publication: May 25, 2004
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Summary taken from goodreads: 

Chloe King is a normal girl. She goes to class (most of the time), fights with her mom, and crushes on a boy…or two. But around her sixteenth birthday, Chloe finds that perhaps she isn't so normal after all. There’s the heightened night vision, the super fast reflexes – oh, and the claws. 

As she discovers who she is – and where she comes from – it is clear she is not alone. And someone is trying to get her. 

Chloe has nine lives. But will nine be enough?

2 STARS - IT WAS OKAY

MY REVIEW:

I watched the tv show a a few years ago and thought that it was interesting enough, even with the stilted acting. I heard the the books were very different from the show and was pretty good. 

In all honesty, after reading THE FALLEN, I think that they are both equal in mediocrity. 

The book could have been pretty good, but it just fell flat and uninteresting. The action was okay, and the writing was suspenseful enough, but the author didn't even explain anything important, like why she suddenly had those powers and who the villains are, and I can understand that it's supposed to be answered in the sequel. Because there was nothing concretely answered, and since the book seemed to rely on the love triangle to keep readers interested in the next book, I really don't care to continue this trilogy.

Also, was it really necessary to have a love triangle. I would have been totally fine with her just going after a bunch of guys, having fun, like how it seemed in the beginning, but once she started waffling over Brian and Alyec, I grew bored. She liked and disliked some aspects of each guy and couldn't seem to make up her mind on either. If she couldn't compromise with one guy, why couldn't she just try to find someone else instead that she liked overall? Why was she so desperate to get a boyfriend? Because her best friends were going out?

Also, the whole best friends getting together and leaving her hanging dynamic serves well for the plot, but really, couldn't she just call Amy and tell her what's up? Or tell Amy her real feelings for being basically abandoned instead of bottling it up? Aren't best friends supposed to be able to tell each other anything?

I wished that the characters were more fleshed out. I don't even think that Chloe was that interesting since she turned boy crazy after she turned 16 and was going on dates with Brian and Alyec in between surviving assassination attempts and learning her powers. Amy and Paul were never really mentioned besides being so wrapped up into each other. The love interests were pretty vague in an attempt to appear mysterious, I suppose. Her mom was an interesting character though. 

But yeah, even though the trilogy is relatively short in terms of pages, I can't bring myself to read the next two books after giving both the first book and tv show a shot. 

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books on My Spring TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the Broke and Bookish.

It's been a while since I've done one of these. -__-" There are lots of books that has came out this year that I'm really looking forward to reading. :)

Top Ten Books On My Spring TBR List:

And my most excited book to read:

Book Nerd Struggles

Buzzfeed had a great article (with gifs!) called 23 Struggles Only Book Nerds Will Understand that I just read. It's great. So so accurate, lol. And awesome use of gifs. XD

Because, man, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, and 22 are all too real, lol. I basically related to the whole article because it's so true. 

I don't know if I'm lucky or not to have been getting out of the reading phase for the past few years so that I don't read or buy as many books as I used to, but man, those years when I read voraciously and bought as many books as possible... Yeah, I really related to the struggle she mentioned in the article. XD

Books I Want to Read This Month

It's Spring Break, and I am committed to trying to read at least one of these books! >:)

1. The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
2. The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
3. The Young World by Chris Weitz
4. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
5. Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
6. Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
7. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
8. Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher
9. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
10. Spark by Amy Kathleen Ryan
11. The Geography of Me and You by Jennifer E. Smith
12. Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
13. Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers
14. Nevermore by James Patterson
15. Divergent by Veronica Roth

February in Retrospect

Yeah, I didn't have much time to do anything this month, lol.

I read:

• The Witch Hunter by Virginia Boecker

I reviewed:

• City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

I watched:

• Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
• Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Book Review: City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1) by Cassandra Clare

Title: City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1)
Author: Cassandra Clare
Pages: 485
Publication: March 27, 2007
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Summary taken from goodreads: 

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing -- not even a smear of blood -- to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy? 

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know...  

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

2.5 STARS - I LIKED IT ENOUGH

MY REVIEW: 

I remember reading this book around five years and thinking that it wasn't that great, that it read like fanfiction. Then, a few years later, when I really got into reading, I found out that the book was based off of a fanfic trilogy. Fast forward to the end of last year, my sister convinced me to watch the movie with her, and while the movie wasn't that great, the details of the movie compared to my vague memories of the book made me want to give the trilogy a shot again.

I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. There was so much that bothered me, and yet I still couldn't quit reading the book.

Like, now that I knew that this trilogy was based off of the author's Draco trilogy, I could see the similarities. I mean, the bad guy alone was pretty obvious: Valentine = Voldemort, the Circle = Death Eaters, and attempting a genocide in the name of preserving blood purity? Really, really similar.

And the writing still read like fanfiction. The writing was awkward at times, especially when describing certain scenes or smells. The descriptions would start off well enough, the words flowing together smoothly, and then there'd be an awkward phrasing that would just throw the whole scene off for me because of its incongruity.

And don't get me started on the excessive amounts of similes used in the book. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with similes; they're great for descriptions, but using so many similes trying to help describe scenes and emotions is a cop-out. It's like saying, "I don't really know if you understand what I'm trying to say, so here's a comparison for example" or "I'm too lazy and/or can't be bothered to explain this so here's an example of what I mean." Either way, it doesn't reflect well on a writer.

In addition, for an almost 500 page book, most of the characters weren't even fleshed out that well. Clary was pretty much a Mary Sue with the only traits that separated her from being a complete bore was how stubborn and brash she was, which isn't that much of a compliment since she never thought things through. Jace was supposed to be a tortured jerk with a soft side, but I couldn't get over how he never talked like a proper teenager would; his vocabulary was too advanced to sound like a 16-year-old. Alec was always either angry or jealous until the end when he had a sudden change of heart. Isabelle served as a foil for Clary. Simon was the typical sidekick/boy next door, although his skills with a bow was a nice touch. Luke was actually fleshed out pretty well, since you get to hear about his back story and motivations. And her mom and Valentine never really get to explain themselves, since you hear about their motives through everyone else

And yet, even with all of those problems, I still finished the book. I was still interested enough in finding out what happened until the end that I read all 485 pages, so there's something addicting about this book that'has me picking up the sequel... Plus, I already own the next two books in the series, so there's that.

Hopefully the next book will be better written with better characters.

didn't mean to go MIA

Whoops, I didn't mean to forget to blog all month. -__-" I mean, at times, I would remember that I should blog, but things were too busy, I soon forgot about it, or David was around, and I didn't want to blog. I've told him a while ago that I have a blog, but I still haven't shown him it, and I'm not sure I want him to see me blog, because he sits right next to me, so he'll be able to read everything I write.

I feel like not a lot of things have happened, but I'm pretty sure they did. I'm just too forgetful and lazy to blog about it. Lol, there was midnight movie, Valentine's day, group projects, and lots of fun times with David. Idk, maybe I'll eventually get around to talking about the whole progression with our relationship, lol.

I also bought and received some books this past weekend, so I will hopefully have a post about that soon. I don't remember if I posted about this last year, but my phone broke around Thanksgiving, so I've been using my mom's old phone since, and it has a really crappy camera. That's why I still haven't made a post about the other books I bought in December. 

Hopefully these books will convince me to make time to read, because I really should do something about the piles of books lying around my room that's been collecting dust for the past three years, lol. When I was in Books-A-Million this weekend, I didn't even recognize almost half of the Young Adult section; I've been so out of the loop! :c When did this happen?

But yeah, I should be studying or doing some homework, but my laptop's being super laggy and annoying. Perhaps I will start reading a book instead. :D