Top Ten Most Recent Library Requests and Holds

Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly feature created at The Broke and The Bookish.

I know, I know, a bit similar to last week. But also different. When I request books from the library they're often the "I'm not sure if I'll like this and if I hate it I know I'll regret buying it because money doesn't grow on trees, but I also really hope I'll love it" variety.

1. The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi: I don't have a great track-record with debuts, but this sounds pretty fantastic.

2. Truthwitch by Susan Dennard: I didn't love her Something Strange and Deadly trilogy, but this does sound more up my alley.

3. Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan: I am actually really hoping to love this one, but I'm not entirely sure if I'd be comfortable buying it without knowing what I'm getting myself into first.

4. The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa: While I liked The Immortal Rules, I'd like to see where this series goes before deciding if I want to purchase it or now.

5. The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa: See above.

6. Passenger by Alexandra Bracken: This one is actually in my hands right now. I wasn't sure if I'd like it or not, having not read any of the author's work before, and being a bit uncertain of the premise despite my love of time travel books.

7. Their Fractured Light by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner: Reading Illuminae last year reminded me that I hadn't finished this trilogy. While I didn't love it, I also didn't hate it.

8. The Queen's Choice by Cayla Kluver: Bored bored bored. I was not impressed with the first 70% of this novel. I only found myself remotely engaged toward the end.

9. These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly: I read and reviewed this a while ago.

10. Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater: Confession: I audiobooked Sinner before reading any the rest of The Wolves of Mercy Falls. I wanted to read it after I finished Shiver, Linger, and Forever, though. P. S. The audiobook is fantastic, you should all definitely listen to it.

Do you use libraries? Does your local library have a wonderful request feature? Does it sometimes take 87 years for holds to come in?

Blogademics

I'm hesitant to call this a new "feature" on this blog, per say, but "Blogademics" is now going to be the title of a series of mini-essays I'm writing about my experience as a student, as a blogger, and a student blogger. (I just really like making up words, okay?)

These are born mainly from me thinking a lot about how I blog- my process is ever-evolving, but there are common threads. By and large, this will be a mini-essay collection about juggling blogging with school, and all the weird ways in which they have and do overlap in my life. I did say I'd talk more about my life this year, right? (Look at me, attempting to implement a New Year's resolution!)

I love being in school, now that I'm not in high school (your time in high school will really only be the best years of your life if you do the rest of your life wrong). I've been in school for over 80% of my life and I've internalised some pretty weird thought paths. Conventional education really does train you to think a certain way, to do things a certain way, to follow a certain path in a certain way. Blogging isn't like that. It also isn't not like that. And these posts are my chance to muse on that.

You can expect:

• discussions about reading, blogging, and transferable skills
• panic about grad school applications
• amusing rants about high school English (at least, I hope they'll be amusing)
• complaining about deadlines
• probably mentions of my favourite blogs/ bloggers
• undoubtedly double negatives

I'm super excited to launch this featurette/ essay series/ quest/ thing! I've never really done something like this before, so it'll be an adventure. I hope you'll have as much fun reading these as I do writing them!

Top Ten Books I've Recently Added To My TBR

Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly feature created at The Broke and The Bookish.

I'm going to go with some of the books I've put on my Goodreads TBR list recently.

1. The Darkest Days Club by Alison Goodman: I don't know why I didn't explore this one before (the cover? the marketing style?) but I read the synopsis this weekend and it sounds like a lot of fun!

2. Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor: I do love time travel! I actually have an eGalley of this one, I'm really looking forward to starting it.

3. Front Lines by Michael Grant: This sounds like a really interesting and intense alternative history.

4. A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry: The cover kind of reminds me of A Hundred Years of Solitude (which was such a weird book), and the story sounds sort of magical realism-y

5. Flamecaster by Cinda Williams Chima: I read the Seven Kingdoms/Shattered Realms series a 86 million years ago (okay, three), and I think it will be fun to revisit the world.

6. Genius: The Game by Leopoldo Gout: I love the cover of this one! I'm hoping that this one will be a really fast paced read. I'm trying not to judge this author based on Daniel X, which I didn't love.

7. The Square Rood of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood: I really like the saturated green in the cover, and this sounds like it could be a great read- almost a contemporary, but not.

8. Truthwitch by Susan Dennard: I wasn't crazy about Something Strange and Deadly, this sounds a lot more up my alley.

9. Love, Lies, and Spies by Cindy Anstey: I was mostly drawn by the fact that our heroine is a nineteenth century lady with scientific aspirations.

10. The Masked Truth by Kelley Armstrong: This one sounds suspenseful!

Review: These Shallow Graves

Title: These Shallow Graves
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Genre: historical fiction, mystery
Release Date: October 27, 2015
Goodreads

A Quick Introduction: Jo Montfort is about to graduate finishing school, as proper young lady set to marry a wealthy man to improve her family's standing in society- and to abandon her dream of being a reporter, until her father is found dead. His death is ruled an accident, but Jo doesn't believe it, and begins to investigate. The deeper Jo digs, the less that makes sense, and the more she wants a life that she's been told is impossible.

Out of Ten: 7/10

Review at a Glance: An enjoyable historical mystery about a girl trying to solve a mystery and find her place in the world.

Review: This book is really hard for me to rate, because there were quite a few plot lines, which, though interconnected, somehow ended up quite separate in my mind. I really enjoyed the mystery in this one (bring on the early forensics!) and didn't like the romance nearly as much.

Jo is a complex character. She's naive but strangely adaptable, vulnerable but unshakable in her convictions. While I overall appreciated her, there were times that I slipped out of being connected to her. It was generally during her romantic dilemmas, because I found I didn't quite understand her feelings about her love interest- I personally didn't like him very much. That aside, I did sympathize struggle between what she'd been raised to do and what she really wanted to do. I admired her tenacity in going after what she wanted, and the lengths she was willing to go to in order to get the truth. I was definitely rooting for her.

The mystery was probably my favourite part of the story. I love seeing fledgling forensics being used (Murdoch Mysteries, anyone?) in historical mysteries, so that was fantastic for me! The entire mystery aspect was just so enjoyable for me to read- though I was somewhat expecting the plot twist, but I was really expecting it, if that makes sense. I was still reasonably surprised but the conclusion to that aspect of the story.

I struggled with the historical aspect as a setting- it didn't always feel real to me, though the characters generally felt of the time. Sometimes I think they felt like there were actors against a backdrop, rather than characters in the gritty real world.

Overall, I quite enjoyed reading this one. Though there were some aspects that jolted me out of the story or didn't ring quite true, I loved the mystery!

---

If These Shallow Graves is your cup of tea, you might also like A Mad, Wicked Folly (for a determined heroine in a repressive time) or The Mary Quinn Mysteries (for a historical mystery and a girl struggling to carve a place for herself).

Top Ten 2015 Releases I Meant To Get To But Didn't

Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly feature created at The Broke and The Bookish.

1. The Next Together by Lauren James

2. Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

3. Soundless by Richelle Meade

4. A Madness So Discreet Mindy McGinnis

5. Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

6. Slasher Girls and Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke

7. Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures by Jackson Pearce and Maggie Stiefvater

8. The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

9. The Masked Truth by Kelley Armstrong

10. Air Awakens by Elise Kova

Review: Lock & Mori

Title: Lock & Mori
Author: Heather W. Petty
Series: Lock & Mori
Volume: 1
Genre: Mystery, Realistic Fiction
Goodreads

A Quick Introduction: When brilliant high school students James "Mori" Moriary and Sherlock Holmes meet at the scene of a murder, they click. When Sherlock challenges her to solve the murder before he does, Mori accepts. They only have one rule: no secrets- they have to share every bit of information they find about the case. It isn't long before Mori discovers something that makes her break it.

This review is of an ARC copy provided by the publisher.

Out of Ten: 5/10

Review at a Glance: An overly convenient plot and frustratingly inconsistent narrator left me unimpressed by this novel.

Review: I continually search for Sherlock Holmes retellings, tributes, and spin-offs that will impress me. This one... didn't, unfortunately. I wasn't impressed with it as an adaptation- the way the story was told, and the story itself, just didn't work for me. Though I did get an ARC copy at the Book Blogger Ontario meet-up this year, I didn't end up reading it until later.

The mystery itself worked well enough, though it was not particularly elegantly plotted. I find with a lot of mysteries, especially YA, authors have a tendency to make things almost too neat. There isn't enough work done to reach the conclusion. The line is crossed between making intuitive leaps and fabricating connections where none actually exist. Things are just a bit too convenient for me to suspend disbelief on. This did happen in this novel, to an extent, and it wasn't carried by the other aspects of the story.

What I didn't really enjoy was the characters and their relationships. The relationship between Lock and Mori felt really rushed, and I found I really didn't understand the motives behind the decisions of the main character (Mori) sometimes. The character that she was set up as didn't seem consistent with her decisions (I suppose her character felt inconsistent).

I recognise that this novel had some strengths, but I didn't overall enjoy it as much as I was hoping to. The characters and plot didn't ring true for me, and the mystery didn't have much of a flow. As an adaptation, I wasn't thrilled with how the characters were translated.

2016 Challenges

I'm a huge fantasty reader already, but I figured it would still be fun to challenge myself. This year I'm going to try and read 40 books that are fantasy in some way. The Flights of Fantasy challenge is hosted by Alexa Loves Books and Hello, Chelly.

The Re-Read Challenge, hosted by Belle of the Literati.  I took part in this one last year, and it was great (I reread kind of obsessively anyway, but, again, it was kind of fun to incorporate a challenge into it). Last year I set a goal of 10 books, which I exceeded. I'm still going to keep 10 books as my goal for this year.

I've challenged myself to read 100 books again for the Goodreads challenge. It's the same number I chose last year, though I didn't quite meet it, I still believe it's completely withing my abilities- I just wasn't completely focused last year.

I took a year off of The Debut Author Challenge, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, but I actually found I kind of missed it, so I'm giving it a try again this year.

Series Spotlight: The Spiderwick Chronicles

I read these wonderful little books earlier this year. My reasons were two-fold: 

1. I've become very fond of Holly Black's writing in the past year or so. I've always been drawn to novels that delve into folklore, and I really liked her treatment of the fae in The Darkest Part of the Forest. 
2. I love Tony DiTerlizzi's artwork SO. MUCH. His illustrations for the covers (and, as I was to discover, contents) of The Spiderwick Chronicles are enchanting and creepy, managing to be both charming and slightly Gothic. 

Though these were being released while I was in the desired age group, and I saw them in my elementary school library. We rubbed elbows, but despite being pretty much the exact target demographic for strange, magical, wonderfully illustrated books, I hadn't read them. Perhaps it was because I hadn't get realised that I was the exact target demographic for such books. Whatever the reason, I'm glad that I got the chance to experience them now.

The Spiderwick Chronicles tell the story of the Grace siblings, Mallory, Jared, and Simon. They move to their Aunt's old house after their mother and father separate and quickly discover that there's something very strange going on in rickety old building. When Jared finds an old book filled with drawing and notes on fantastical creatures that live, unseen, alongside humans, they find themselves in the middle of a clash between supernatural creature, who are interested in the guide for their own reasons.

I bought the Spiderwick Chronicles: The Completely Fantastical Edition, which is a bind-up of the five original Spiderwick books, plus three short stories and some bonus art. It really was a quick and easy world, but I still found the world delightful. While it is very much a Middle Grade novel, with the age of the protagonists and the nature of the plot, it still worked for me. I loved the bonus are as well! It was great to be able to see some of Tony DiTerlizzi's thumbnail sketches and process work. If you'd like to read Spiderwick, especially as an older reader, I'd recommend this edition. It almost feels like reading one longer, complete work, rather than reading five very short books (all are under 200 pages, I believe) in rapid order.

Because I am weak, I also picked up the original hardcovers (the box set was under $25) on Book Outlet a while ago. I just really love the look of them (especially the covers).

And that brings us to one of my favourite books of 2015, looks-wise: Arthur Spiderwick's Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. 

This is a companion to the Spiderwick novels, filled with wonderful illustrations and facts about the creatures encountered by the Grace siblings in the stories. I was so excited when I found this one on Book Outlet! In addition to being a really interesting reading experience, I LOVED the watercolours in this book. You can see a couple of them on Tony DiTerlizzi's website. (that's where I got the images above).

Overall, I really highly reccomend this series, and not just to Middle Grade readers. The creativity of the series makes it an enjoyable read for anyone who appreciates faerie stories and beautiful art.