Saturday, January 24, 2015

A Trilogy

For the trilogy item, I read the Ruby Read Trilogy by Kerstin Gier. How did I choose this trilogy? I picked a book at random from the library and it happened to be the first book of three already published books. A very well thought out method, don't you think?

The first book is called Ruby Red.
When I started this book, I didn't like it much. The plot was moving along at a snail's pace and the main character, Gwenyth, was not the sharpest tool in the shed. She bordered on being ridiculously  stupid and it was difficult to tell if it was intentional. However, I stuck with it.
I spent most of the book only partly enjoying it- until the last two chapters. This was where it finally picked up the pace and the romance started developing and Gwenyth finally became her own individual rather than a silly shadow of her reasonably brighter best friend. I swear most of the book was 'Lesley said this' and 'Lesley thought that' and 'Lesley always said this'. Like I said though, it got better around the end before dropping off in a cliffhanger which was probably the reason I decided to continue the series. 

The second book is Sapphire Blue.
Right from the start, this book was better than the first. Although I could be biased because the first chapter had more romance than the entire first book. However, almost every aspect of the book seemed more coherent and interesting. Gwenyth was portrayed as adorably naive rather then infuriatingly dull and she finally became independent of Lesley. Another thing I loved about this book was the introduction of the character Xemerius, the ghost of a gargoyle that had long since been destroyed. He provided comic relief and helped move the plot along several times. He easily became my favorite character. Sapphire Blue, like Ruby Red, ended in a cliff hanger that the third book will hopefully wrap up for good.

The final book in the series is Emerald Green.
The first picture is the copy that looks like the others, the second is the copy that I bought at Barnes and Nobles because they didn't have it at either library I go to. I'm going to talk about the book in a second, but first, I want to talk about the exciting adventure I went on to pick up this book. I was at Star Co Coffee with my mom and her friend, playing scrabble and waiting for the library across the street to open. It just so happened, a movie was being filmed in the street between the cafe and the library. And it was starring actor Johnathon Bennett who played Aaron in Mean Girls. We even got a picture with him!
Okay, onto the book review part.
I loved this book. It was excellent. The ending was a bit odd, but somehow it worked with the writing style. The ending was nicely wrapped up and the characters were so nicely developed I think I'mm going to miss them. Emerald Green was overall cover to cover amazingness and I recommend the series to anyone.
Onto a new book and author!

Saturday, January 17, 2015

52 Books in 2015

I was at my public library the first day of 2015 to write with my dad like we do every week when I saw an interesting board pinned up in the Teen Area. It was a list of types of books to read in 2015. It had 50 items on it, one of which was a trilogy which adds up to 52 books total.
(I will post a link to where I typed up the list at the end of the article so it's easier to read.)

In 2014 I feel like I spent less time than I would have liked reading actual books and too much time reading fan fiction. I decided to take up this challenge as a way to ween myself off my slight addiction to fan fiction, because I used to love reading and because as an author I need to do more reading than what I've been doing. And what better way to stick with it than blogging about it?

Because it's 52 books, that means a book every week and right now I'm close to where I should be. I started with reading a trilogy and I'm 2 books into it as well as the read a book with more than 500 pages and I'm about 200 into that. I plan to write more about the types of books I'm reading in individual posts about the specific items on the list. This post was mainly just to describe the challenge and share my new years resolution. Maybe I can convince a few of you to join me?

I don't know if I'll manage to read all 52 books with starting my first college classes in January and attending high school as well as everything else in life, but I'm going to try. As long as I end up reading more than I did last year, I'll be happy.
I hope you enjoyed reading this and here is a link to the challenge.