Best of 2015

Wow, it's already the first day of 2016! I barely finished my Goodreads challenge for 2015 and now it's time to start a new one. I can't wait. I've started another blog for the coming year which you can find here. Before I started that, however, I wanted to compile a list of my favorites of the books I read in 2015. So here it is!

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

These four books were definitely my favorite reading material from 2015. My reviews for the first three books can be found here, here and here. I haven't had time to write a review for Winter yet, but I'll tell you it's just as good (if not better) than the first three. These books center around different fairy tails that have been re-imagined. I know that's popular now, but no one does it as well as Marissa Meyer. Trust me, you'll be hooked after the first few pages of Cinder. 

 

The Ruby Red Series by Kerstin Gier

Another YA fantasy trilogy. I read these at the start of the year I think, 

but they were great from what I remember. Read my reviews here. 

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

I don't normally like Nonfiction books, but I enjoyed this one. My review is here.

The 100 by Kass Morgan
If you have a Netflix account, you've probably seen the show advertised a couple times. After watching the show (which is great by the way) and having a friend who loved the books, I asked for this for Christmas. My review?
It wasn't as good as the show, sadly, but it had it's own appeal. It's only on this list because I never wrote a full review for it...
Positives: The characters were well written and each had their own motives and goals. The plot was thought out and full of twists that weren't in the show.
Negatives: The sense of time was awkward, switching constantly between present and random points in the past. Every chapter switched to a new point of view, alternating between four characters which I found choppy and confusing.

I hope you'll look into these books and love them as much as I did. They've got very special places on my bookshelf. I hope I'll find some more awesome books in 2016. Thanks for following my blog!

A Nonfiction Book

If you know me (or even if you've read my other blog posts) you probably know I'm not much for nonfiction. However, I love self-help material, mostly from Tumblr and the Internet, but I couldn't resist when I found a huge self-help area in a one dollar book store while visiting Utah. It's an awesome little place that I can't recall the name of. As soon as I find out, I'll update this information!

Anyways, my mom, brother, my cousins and I stopped by to check out the place (mostly on my suggestion because I love bookstores.). I was amazed by how many books they had- and each was only a dollar! I could've spent forever there, but due to the rest of my family being there, I only had about twenty minutes. I grabbed about five books that I'd read the backs of, one of which happened to be 'the Happiness Project'.

I feel like I'm a pretty happy person, but I (like Gretchen Rubin), could be happier. With little respite from my anxiety, I decided to check out this book. What did I have to lose when it was only a dollar?

When I finished this book, I gave it four out of five stars. I liked the story and I liked a lot of Rubin's suggestions on how to find happiness "in your own kitchen", but there was something missing. One thing that bothered me was how often she would talk about studies and facts without giving any sources. That was probably the biggest problem I had with this book. 

However, I enjoyed the way she blended her story in with information from her studies on happiness. I loved and could relate with a lot of the story, but these were my favorite quotes from it.

I hope they're readable what with the terrible photo resolution that my phone offers. I chose to center this page of my art journal around The Happiness Project, so obviously it's a book worth thinking about. I couldn't just read it, put it down and walk away. A lot of it stayed with me. 

Would I recommend this book? It depends. If you're skeptical of learning about happiness from someone else or are set in your ways, no. But if you have an open mind and a willingness to try to be happier with everyday life, definitely. My mom is interested in reading this book so hopefully once she does, I'll add onto this post with her opinions!

(You may have noticed this blog now has ads. Sorry about that, but I'm seventeen and I don't have a job so I need the money for now. Unless y'all want to go buy one of my books! If the ads get too annoying I'll remove them, but for now just ignore them if you can.)

Shojo Manga!

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd been reading a lot of Manga, but I don't want to spend all my time blogging about books that come in series of about 20 volumes and can be easily read in a day. However, I thought I would share a bit about the different series and authors I've been reading from. 

(Warning: if you don't like graphic novels, step away now!)

The first is Black Bird by Kanoko Sakurakoji. 

I started this while in Dallas for my cousin's graduation and have read almost six volumes in the span of a week. The story line centers around a teen girl named Misao who can see yōkai (monsters) that no one else can. She's been able to see them since she was little and while they are a constant annoyance, they're not particularly dangerous. Until she turns sixteen. 
On her birthday, Misao discovers that she's what yōkai call an "immortal fruit", meaning her blood can magically heal an injured or dying yōkai. Furthermore, if a clan leader marries her, his clan gains power. One clan leader after her is Kyou, a tengu (a specific bird-like demon), and her childhood friend. He can heal her wounds by licking them (I know, ew, but hear me out) and vows he'll do whatever it takes to protect her, leaving Misao to ponder if he really loves her like he says or if he only wants her because she's the immortal fruit. 

The plot is intricate (in case you couldn't tell) 

and full of surprises you won't see coming. 

Furthermore, Sakurakoji's artwork is both 

adorable and stunning. Just look:

(The first picture I found on another, more in-depth review of Black Bird. Click here for link. )

If that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will!

A Book With a Color in the Title

On the side of my blog there is a little button that shows how many books I've read out of my total goal. If you've seen this before, you may have I've been adding books that I've finished, but I haven't been blogging about them. This is because I've gotten really into Manga lately and each volume is so short I feel like blogging about each one individually would get repetitive and time consuming. So I waited until I finished Scarlet, the second book in the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.

I took my time reading this only because I was so focused on Manga that I didn't get around to it much. However, when I finally did adjust to the difference in pace and such, I found Scarlet was a book with an interesting plot and a fantastic main character. 

Like Cinder, Scarlet is a retelling of a classic fairy tail and the title is also the name of the main character. In this case, the traditional story was Little Red Riding Hood. Scarlet, the character not the entire novel, is a much more contemporary and stronger character than the original little red (whatever her name was). Scarlet doesn't wait for a lumberjack to come save her, though a little help from one of the wolves never goes astray, and takes her fate into her own hands.

The story starts with the abduction of Scarlet's grandmother and her chance meeting with a man called Wolf who fights for a living, has never eaten tomato, and has a strange tattoo. While romance builds between the two, Cinder (from book one) is busy breaking out of prison with Captain Thorne and returning android, Iko, as companions. At the same time all of this is happening, Prince Kai attempts to avoid war with the Lunar queen after finding out she's building an army out of genetically modified citizens. The book is action-packed with side notes of romance and comedy. 

To sum it all up, Marissa Meyer did an excellent job with this sequel and I look forward to reading Cress and Winter (when it comes out in November!).  

A Book Set In The Future

So, here's the thing. I thought I had posted about this book before, but it turns out, I never got around to it. Oops. To be fair, I spent the last month (and pretty much the whole time I was reading these) travelling. Anyways, I finished Cress from the Lunar Chronicles and am excitedly awaiting the release of the last book in November!

This was an amazing book and once again I found myself blown away by Marissa Meyer's writing. I would one hundred percent recommend this series to anyone who's okay with waiting a couple months for the last book!

A Book Set in Another Country

For this item, I read Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

I've heard people talking about this book for a while now. I originally bought it back when I bought Emerald Green (in February, I believe?), but I had so much other stuff to read that I simply didn't get around to it until now. I started it less than a week ago and the first time I picked it up, I read one hundred and fifty pages. Skip forward five days and I've finished the almost 400 page book. So yes, it was good.

I liked Cinder because it was very suspenseful and quite a page turner. The main character, Cinder, was a bit preoccupied with silly things, but she was also smart and interesting. Starting with the fact that she's a cyborg. If you don't already know, Cinder puts a science fiction spin on the well known fairy tale, Cinderella. It's set in a fictional country in Asia, after World War IV. 

Cinder is brought up like Cinderella- an outcast in her own home, raised by a neglectful step mother with her two step sisters. Unlike Cinderella, she has no intention of going to the prince's ball. She's also a crazy talented mechanic. Throughout the book, she becomes a large part of the initiative to end the common and deadly illness, Letumosis. Meanwhile Prince Kai struggles to maintain peace with the queen of the Lunars- a mostly magical race of people that moved to the moon a while back.

One of the only problems I had with this book was that Cinder was a bit extreme. She was the best mechanic around (so amazing even the prince would seek her out), she was a cyborg and several other twists that I don't want to spoil, but add up to be quiet a lot of specialness in one person. 

However, I loved Meyer's writing. It was detailed enough for the images to be clear in my mind, yet simple enough to keep the story constantly moving. It's the kind of writing I aspire for. I'll definitely be looking for the rest of the books in the chronicles!

A Graphic Novel (Or Two Mangas!)

So you may have guessed by the title, but this is kind of a continuation of my last blog post. Since then, I have finished two more of the Black Butler books and I realized since they are shorter than your average book, I won't write a blog post for each one. I may do one more post where I can talk about the entire series if I finish it.

For now, look at the pretty covers of the two Mangas I just read.

The guy on the front is the slightly overpowered demon butler, Sebastian. Aside from a rather amusing typo in the third volume (I'm not sure if it occurred originally or during translation from Japanese), these two were just as entertaining as the first book. I don't want to go too into detail, because spoilers, but the end of the third book began to deviate from the show and I'm excited to see where that goes. Yana Toboso is a very talented artist and that made it all the more fun to read. 

Annoying side note, I tried to find these at the library I go to and the first eight were checked out! After that, the rest were there so I'm assuming someone checked out all eight books at once. Who does that? 

(That is from the anime.)

Alright, I hope this post was satisfactory and I'm off to read some more Black Butler digitally and maybe start Cinder or continue the second Game of Thrones books...