Month: January 2015

Book to Movie Review: The Maze Runner

Posted January 16, 2015 / Book to Movie Reviews / 7 Comments

The Maze Runner by James Dashner Read my review of the book here. True to Book: Casting: Enjoyability: Overall Score: Goodreads Book Plot Summary: If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human. When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone. Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade. Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive. Everything is going to change. Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying. Remember. Survive. Run. I’m not happy. Aside from the general outline of the plot, this was nothing like the book. The way events transpired was just…not the same. I’m okay with creative liberties being taken when needed, but it just makes a movie very hard to watch when you’re literally taking notes on what is different from the book. Be cautious with reading this review if you haven’t read the book yet. Mild spoilers ahead. True to the Book Just no. Not at all. Some things may seem nitpicky, but I really wanted to record everything so that I could show just how many differences there were. Here are all the ways (that I could remember!) the movie failed compared to the book: Movie: Thomas didn’t remember his name until he randomly starts fighting with Galley. Book: Galley and him didn’t tussle […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin – Mid-January 2015

Posted January 15, 2015 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 8 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin is a bi-monthly feature where I look back on everything I did and everything I plan to do next. Instead of participating in some of the popular weekly memes, I combine it all into two bulletins per month: one at the mid-month mark and one on the final day of the month. I’ll also be updating my 2015 challenge progress here. You can learn more and see past Bookmark Lit bulletins here! It’s been a good month so far! We spent a low-key New Years at my friend’s house, where we just watched the balldrop and some of the performances afterwards. It was amazing having so much time off from work the weeks of Christmas and New Years… which made for a rude awakening on January 5th when I had a full week of work. Last weekend was full of football, as it should be. I hate when the season starts coming to an end because then I may as well not even pay for cable. On Friday, I took my dad, stepmom, and boyfriend to a blues concert (Ronnie Earl) at a new theater in Hartford. It was so much fun and he can REALLY kill it on guitar. My dad was so happy and excited the whole time; it was awesome. I went to my friends’ apartment for breakfast on Sunday because I hadn’t seen them in a while. Her son is SO BIG – I spent the whole morning showing him pictures of […]

Review: The Secrets of Lily Graves

Posted January 14, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I had pretty low expectations when starting this book because I had seen a lot of pretty negative reviews. Most people said that it was glaringly predictable, but I am SO BAD at predicting things in books. Mysteries and thrillers always catch me off guard because I kind of try not to make theories about what’s going to happen because I would rather be surprised…. but even when I do make predictions, they’re wrong. I was thinking that I would be the black sheep and actually end up liking this one, but I was nervous about the ending. (I had a feeling this was going to a book that’s success hinged on the ending, and I was right.) I think the overall concept and setting was really cool. It was the epitome of a story that sounds GREAT in theory but was poorly executed. What Worked The fact that the main character, Lily, was in a family that ran a funeral home was pretty sweet. I thought that would be a good setup for an interesting story that obviously involved death. It was able to give Lily some insider information to help her solve the mystery. That whole aspect was interesting and kept me reading. In general I think Lily was veryyy generally characterized, which is obviously not a good thing, but there were a few instances where humor and feminism shown through. I liked that she stayed true to herself no matter what. The pacing was pretty good. It […]

Random Bookish Thoughts: Blogging

Posted January 13, 2015 / Discussions, Other Memes / 27 Comments

Thoughts on Book Blogging I am by no means an expert on the book blogging community. I only created my blog in July 2014 and I know that there are countless bloggers out there who have been in the community for many, many years. But, there have been many recent events that have added a bit of drama and controversy. I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on the community in general and what I’ve learned from this community as a newbie. Most of this was based on Anna’s decision to leave the community and some of the amazing tweets she posted recently on her opinions and choice to leave blogging behind. I’ve been wanting to make a post with tips for newbie bloggers, from a newbie blogger, but this seemed like a good time to combine all of my thoughts and advice into one big ol’ discussion post. On ARC-Envy and Pressure There is no greater thing than free books, right? Of course. When I started up my blog I had NO idea that ARCs were possible. Book bloggers got free copies of books before they were released? I was in heaven! I knew this was the place for me. But, of course, there’s a catch. There are so many side effects from ARCs that you almost wonder if it’s worth it. I used to get very envious of other people’s ARCs because I wanted to feel needed and popular like that. ARC-envy is understandable for books […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #24: Meant to Read in 2014

Posted January 13, 2015 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 19 Comments

Books I Meant to Read in 2014…and Didn’t Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make LISTS of our top ten books based on that week’s prompt… and then we stalk other people’s answers to add a million books to our TBR. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. OKAY so oddly enough, I prepared this post for last Friday, thinking it would be a neat little graphic to share for a discussion post… then I went on and found out it was the topic for this week’s TTT! The original topic is the top 10 books released in 2014 that I meant to read but didn’t. I tweaked it a little, so mine includes 14 books and may also include books from before 2014. Honestly too lazy to see when they were released! Sometimes I look at my TBR and wonder how it’s possible that I haven’t read a certain book yet. When it was first released or I first heard of it, I was the most eager person in the world to get my hands on it. Maybe I even bought it. There are some books that have been at the forefront of my mind for months. I’ve pined over them. I’ve whispered “I’ll read you next” when I pass it in my list or in a store. I’ve read countless reviews on it. And yet…. I still haven’t read it. Here are some of the books I cannot believe […]

Review: All Lined Up

Posted January 12, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

Review Honestly this one wasn’t what I expected. I should have known it wasn’t going to be the LOL-funny New Adult books I’ve recently come to know and love. It was a bit more angsty than that. There were definitely some funny moments that I enjoyed, and definitely a bit of steaminess, but a lot of the “emotional” parts had me rolling my eyes like nobody’s business. Dallas was a bit melodramatic a lot of the time. I get where she’s coming from: her dad doesn’t pay her a lot of attention, her mom isn’t around, and she doesn’t know who she is (apparently). I do enjoy some flawed characters – but only to a certain extent. They have to realize when they’re being weird and insecure in order for me to be semi-okay with it. Luckily Dallas does seem to realize it a few times… “I recognize the self-loathing because I’m a master at it.” – yeah, no kidding girl. A lot of the drama in this book was built on misunderstandings, which always annoys me. Dallas hung around being a whiny baby all the time and Carson remained perfect. (I love him, by the way.) The CHEMISTRY between those two… JESUS. Besides all of that self-pity, a lot of the dialogue (both inside her head and with her friends) just bugged me. People complain that The Fault in Our Stars has two teenagers with vocabularies that are “unrealistic” or too fancy for their ages? Well, I thought that the dialogue in this […]

Blog Tour Review & Favorite Quotes: Perfect Couple

Posted January 11, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Review This was a cute read that I finished in a day – not too bad for kick-starting my year of reading! It was an “opposites attract” story, much like what I’m assuming the next book in the series will be, which is always kind of fun. Harper is a unique main character that dresses in homemade retro clothes, who is (at the time) dating Kennedy. I really hated him throughout the book and never understood why she stuck with him for so long. He was obviously the wrong person for her; it was frustrating to see that play out longer than made sense. The premise of the Superlatives series is that when the senior class votes on their superlatives, a ripple effect occurs among the winners. In this case, Harper and the popular football player, Brody, are somehow voted Perfect Couple That Never Was. They find themselves kind of drawn together after the vote and things kind of heat up. I loved watching the two of them develop a relationship and have Harper see that there’s much more to Brody than she thinks. The story definitely got steamy, much like the first book in the series. I absolutely love that Echols writes sex-positive characters and isn’t afraid to show that part of high school. Harper had some great lines (you’ll see below in my favorite quotes!) that supported the feminist aspects of the book. Going against that though, Harper decided to change her retro style and get contacts because […]

Five on Fridays #12

Posted January 9, 2015 / Five on Fridays, Weekly Memes / 18 Comments

Five on Friday displays the the top five things that have been on my mind this week! It could be book-related, but it may be music, movies, TV, personal life, food, etc. Snow Sucks Yeah, I hate the snow. I really do. (Despite my smiling face in the photo… It’s Black Friday for Panthers fans, so I had to tweet this dumb picture of myself in my black clothes and Panthers hat)… Driving to work this morning was fairly miserable and I hate how other people act in inclement weather. I know that we should drive slower, obviously, but there are some instances where people act a bit too cautious and make things even worse. FYI, slamming on your breaks suddenly can make you spin out and be even worse than just maintaining your speed in the snow. I am mostly frustrated because my boss lives literally less than a mile away from the office. I’m always the first one into the office because apparently I’m expected to be. So today, in the snow, I had to drive in to make sure I got there in time. I don’t get why my boss can’t just come in to open the office and answer phones while I work from home – even just until driving conditions are safe. That’s all I ask! Bout of Books I know that the point of Bout of Books is to just motivate you to read, even just a little more than you usually would. For some […]

Reread Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Posted January 8, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

Let’s see. I started reading the series when book three was released, so that was back in 1999. I was eight years old. One summer, my friend was reading this book on our summer vacation (we were family friends that went to Cape Cod each summer together), and she started reading it out loud to us before bed. I remember being so fascinated by the series that I asked my mom for the books. I got this first book almost immediately after arriving home that summer. I only remember which year I started because I remember getting books two and three for Christmas that year, and book three had just been released. I remember being in love with it all. The whole world was just so amazing to me. When the movie came out a couple years later, it refreshed my memory on the whole plot of the book. I am really bad at remembering things that happen in books – hence the fact that I have to write all of my reviews within a few hours of finishing the books. I’ve pretty much always known I’ve wanted to reread this series at least a few times in my life. I am normally someone who does NOT reread books because there are so many out there I haven’t read before that I still want to read. I’ve always thought, why bother? BUT, Harry Potter was definitely a series that I wanted to reread. I knew it for a fact. The books […]

Book Jar Review: Pivot Point

Posted January 7, 2015 / Book Reviews / 15 Comments

Twice a month, I’ll pick a slip of paper from my book jar and read a book that has been sitting around for a while. I don’t buy as many physical copies as I do e-books, but my bookshelves are still overflowing with far more unread books than ones I’ve read. A lot of these book jar picks will help with the TBR Challenge I joined for 2015, but some books I own are newer books that won’t qualify. Without further ado, here’s my review for the first book I drew from my book jar! This definitely qualifies as one of those books where I find myself asking WHY didn’t I read this sooner?? I absolutely loved The Distance Between Us by Kasie West and heard nothing but great things about this duology, too. I got it in my Uppercase box a few months ago and was really happy to finally own it… and even happier it was one of my first Book Jar picks! Anyways this book was AWESOME. Totally not what I was expecting – in a great way. I assumed it would be really similar to Just Like Fate, which I also liked, but this was definitely higher-stakes. It was a bit of a mystery and I absolutely could not put it down. First, I thought that Addie was a random girl with abilities. I didn’t realize she lived on a Compound full of people with abilities. That was SO cool and really made it much more […]