Free book!

Hey guys, I’m sorry for not posting for quite a while, I’ve been sick, and making homework and going to school. There’s so much to do! But if you want some content by me, you can always visit my youtube page.

And now about the free book. There’s this website, called Pulseit, where you can read a book for free, and they post a book every week (I think). And you can read it in that time. And right now? They’re letting us read Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card. How about that?!

I’ve really wanted to read something by him for a long time! So that’s great! 🙂 You can read it until it’s november 11th 🙂

You can read the book here

On my wishlist #1

There are 229 books on my to read list, and I think that I have about 40 or 50 of those in my bookcase or my ereader (I also lent some from my sister). But there are always the ones that I don’t have (more than 100) and that I really want. My real wishlist, with books I really need to have in my possession is currently 28 books long, which isn’t even that long. But still, in this series I want to tell you about these books.

#1 Cloud atlas by David Mitchell
I have seen the movie and loved it. I read another book by David Mitchell called Number9Dream and loved it, so why wouldn’t I love this book? I think anyone I follow on youtube must have read this book, and I need to read it someday, too.

#2 The Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language by Mark Forsyth
As a big word lover I really need this book. It contains really weird words of the English language. On goodreads it also says that it’s a “book of weird words for familiar situations”. Totally a book for me!

#3 The Diviners by Libba Bray
I mean the hardback copy, I have seen it on several channels and it’s gorgeous… Also: everyone’s talking about it!

#4 The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
This seems like such a great book! As it’s practically about another book. And if you read this: “A cursed book. A missing professor. Some nefarious men in gray suits. And a dreamworld called the Troposphere?” wouldn’t you just want to read this book?!

#5 Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
In this book there are dragons. Also: these dragons can walk around as humans. Do I have to say more?

I hope you enjoyed this post! Which books are on your wishlist?

Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo

My video review of this book is at the bottom of this post.

Shadow and bone is about a girl called Alina and you could also say about the boy she grew up with who is called Mal. Alina is an assistant of a mapmaker and Mal is a tracker.
In this book there are people called grisha, which are people that have special powers. And at one point of the story Alina finds out that she has a power no one else has, and maybe she could save Ravka (the country she lives in). This story is set in Ravka, which has something of Russia.
At the beginning of the story they are heading for the Shadow Fold, which is a place that is fully dark, and where volcra lie waiting for people to eat.

I won’t tell you more about this book, because you’ll have to find out what’s going on yourself, otherwise I’d be giving you spoilers (and I know I hate them). But what I have to say is: you need to read this.
Okay, it wasn’t a book with great prose that I wanted to take with me and put on goodreads as my favorite quotes. No, it was not that. But it was the fact that this story is so intriguing! I needed to know what would happen. It’s such an original idea I think, especially because of the shadow fold.

So, now about the characters:
The Darkling was a weird one. It was the guy I knew was a bad guy, but still he had his sweet moments. There were a lot of moments I wanted to kill him, and the one kiss he has? Aaaaahh! It’s so frustrating, and you can probably tell me with whom he’ll kiss. I laughed when I read it, it was totally not sudden, but in that moment, it just wasn’t the right time.
Alina was an unknowing girl who found out she had great powers. And she doesn’t know what to do. I think Bardugo did pretty good on her, but not perfect, even though I don’t even know who a perfect female protagonist is…
And then Mal… I don’t have a lot to say about him. He’s sweet I guess? And he’s a really good tracker, haha!

I did really like this book, but as I said: it wasn’t written with beautiful prose, and I kind of had higher expectations. I didn’t expect this book to be so small and have such a big font. When I thought of a book set in Russia, or something like it, I thought that it would be… more difficult to read I guess. But that’s okay. I still loved this book, just not as much as I’d hoped to.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on goodreads, but my actual rating is 3,5 stars. I will definitely read the next book and the novellas (I really loved the witch of Duva, which is the first novella in this series).

The girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making by Catherynne M. Valente

September wants to have grand adventures, so when the Green Wind and his Leopard ask her to come to Fairyland with them, she doesn’t hesitate to say yes. She meets all kinds of creatures and wants to have a great time, but then the Green Wind can’t come with her and she has to go further on her own.

Catherynne created a beautiful world with a lot of creatures that I wouldn’t have thought of, and I think that that was the nicest thing of all. And it wasn’t black and white either. Everything had more than two sides to it.
September wants to help all the people she meets, and that is what makes this adventure dangerous for her. She trusts practically everybody and even though most creatures mean well; some don’t. She goes on a quest like the knights always do, but nothing is as it seems.

About the characters: September was a typical character to play the mainrole in this book. She wanted to go away without saying goodbye to her parents, but on some points she feels sorry for that. She’s just a little girl who gets a lot of possibilities and doesn’t know how to handle all that.
A-through-L, the wyvern of the story (a kind of dragon without the front feet), was the nicest creature I could’ve thought to accompany her on her journey. He was so sweet and caring, and I laughed at his name, because he only knows the things that are A-through-L in dictionaries. And he thinks his dad is a library, haha!
There are many more characters, but I won’t tell you about it: it’s a secret until you read this book for yourself.

I really liked that every chapter had an illustration and a little summary of a few sentences about what’s going to happen. It really made the book stand out and the illustrations were really cute!

If I have children (and they speak English) “when I grow up”, I will definitely let them read this. It’s such a fun book, and I think kids will enjoy it even more than me. I also think that I would’ve enjoyed it more if I’d read it in a longer period of time. I read it in 2 days…

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fairytales, this is a kind of fairytale, so I think this counts.
I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads and am very curious to read the next book in the series… 🙂

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

When Clary sees a few people that her best friend does not, and especially when she sees them kill a guy, she gets really frustrated. But then she finds out they’re shadowhunters and they kill demons, a series of events happen. Her mom gets kidnapped, Clary finds out who she really is, and she gets to know how many of the stories (think about vampires, werewolves, fairies etc) are actually true.

This book has been raved about a LOT. There are people who even buy the movie cover when they already have the original one. I’m sorry guys, but I’m just not part of the hype, I understand why people like it, but it was not my cup of tea. It was too much. Seriously. So many different creatures, it’s like Cassandra Clare didn’t want to exclude any creature that anyone might like. I’m sorry, but it’s just not for me.

I still liked parts of the book. For example Jace, I thought he was funny. And Simon is a really sweet guy, I would definitely want him as my best friend.
There was some action, and I like action scenes because they are fast and grab my attention. They get me reading, and I admit that I did finish this book in two days, so that was pretty fast… But still… I just can’t give a lot of reasons, but I didn’t like it. And the ENDING! Come on, Cassandra! That’s just…… no. Just no.

I have read Clockwork Prince after reading this, because I heard people say that that book is better than CoB, and they were right, I liked Clockwork Prince a lot more. So I might do a review on that one, but don’t count on it.. 🙂

I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars on goodreads.

Bad book habits tag

Here is another video 🙂 It’s about my bad book habits, I hope you enjoy!

Delia’s Secret – Jaime Lee Moyer

Delia has run away from the city where she was born, just so she can be alone. Her problems are the ghosts that she sees there. But when a ghost appears next to her after some time and becomes her “shadow”, she wants to know what’s going on. This is why she leaves her new town to visit her old. What she finds there is not what she expected, but she grabs the opportunity and helps the police in an investigation of some murders.
Gabe however, is struggling with the fact that this murderer is just like the one his dad wanted to catch years before. And just like his father, he gets some distressing letters from this person, which makes it more personal than he thought or
hoped it would be.

This book was what I expected and more, it was nice, I really liked it and think you should all read it when this book comes out. So why did I like this book so much? The writing style was not the kind that blows your mind with metaphors and magical sentences. It was to the point. And for this book it was okay. There is a plot twist somewhere on 4/5 of the book or so that I really didn’t expect, even though I couldn’t even have known it either.

The main character, Delia, is an overall normal woman, she doesn’t really know how to react to the things that are happening, so she goes to her home, where she knows everyone in town. And it gives her hope of finding out why this girl is “stalking” her. I liked her but didn’t love her, but I don’t know why.

About the rest of the characters, Gabe is a different story, he is a sweet guy but I think he doesn’t really know how to show it. This is because he also wants to be this great cop that solves cases and protects people by being harsh, I think? I don’t know… He was… different.

The love story in this book? I feel there was not that much talk about it, which I was grateful for. No instalove or anything, which I normally don’t even believe, so that’s something Jaime Lee Moyer did good.

It was set in the Victorian times, which (I found out) I love, and it’s just the whole feeling that it gave me. Everything that I saw in my head was a bit dark, just like some directors would film their movies if it was set in the Victorian times. Or you could say just like Tim Burton does, even though his movies are mostly not set in that time period. But they’re mostly dark ;-).

Overall, I gave this book a 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. I finished this book on july 16th, so the only reason I can give you for not giving it 5 stars is that it wasn’t perfect. It’s not the kind of story that blew me away and it also won’t be on my favorites list. BUT I really really did enjoy it, a lot.

This book was an e-ARC from netgalley, and I got it from Tor books. This book will be published on Sep 17 2013

August book haul

Hey guys! Today I have a book haul for you, I made a video so I’m posting it here so you can watch it. (: I hope you enjoy!

Wishlist – Composition No.1

This book is one that I’ve been wanting for a while. After I got Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer, I went on a search for the publisher of that book. The publisher seemed to have more weird books. The one that caught my eye was Composition No.1 by Marc Saporta.

It’s a book, or actually a box, from which you can take the pages and shuffle them into another order. On the back of every page there is a kind of letter landscape. Really something to read on a calm day I guess, something to enjoy. And definitely not a book to read outside in the wind, haha! That’s why I wanted to tell you about this “book”, because it’s just something many people might want, and it has to do with books! Haha. It’s unique and that’s what I love about it. Almost no one will read exactly the same story, and that’s the beauty of it!

Source: visual editions

Oh, and btw… you can also buy this book as an app for your iPad or other mobile device (I don’t know if you can get it for an android device), so that’s pretty cool!

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

During the Civil War, a man named Leviticus Blue makes this machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice, called the Boneshaker (hence the name of the book). But when they do a test run in Seattle it releases some gas that could turn people into the undead. The people of Seattle build a wall around this area, so that it doesn’t spread into their lives. But when Blue’s son Zeke (or Ezekiel) wants to prove that it wasn’t his dad’s fault, he goes under the wall into the destroyed city and his mother follows him in.

This was an interesting read. I think I’m liking the steampunk genre (if all the steampunk books are like this). It really was nicely written, even though it didn’t make me think “wow, how does she think of these sentences?!”. Priest gave me a very good image of the different characters. And the whole thought of this other Seattle makes me a bit… scared. What will happen when this happens to us?

There was a bit of worldbuilding, but when you start a series that’s logical. You need to know something about the world you’re reading about, and I liked that it told me something about this world. I wouldn’t say that there was a lot of it (Priest could’ve told us more about that, really) but enough to read the books.

Boneshaker got me hooked very fast, I wanted to read every page and read it in a weekend, so I guess that’s pretty fast. I really liked a lot of characters. Minnericht was greatly developed. It was a creepy character. He was the one that could get stuff from the other side of the wall, the one who was the crazy inventor of this one. And the mysterious air around him was perfect.

The characters are so rich in this book, unbelieveable! I either loved a character or hated them. But even when I hated some, I still liked them for the fact that they were so greatly developed. I think Lucy was my favorite of all. She was the strong woman of this novel, with her disabilities she still manages to get through life, and she’s just tough, and sweet, and so much more!!

The book was exciting, sometimes scary and I wouldn’t say greatly written, but the world itself makes this book worth reading, especially when you love steampunk books (I think). I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars on goodreads, because I loved it that much. (:

You can buy it on the bookdepository, if you buy it with this link I will get a small commission to pay for more books (so more reviews). You don’t have to buy it through this link, but I’d be grateful if you do. (: