Once Upon a Read-a-thon: Final Update + Mini-Challenge

It's the last day of this awesome read-a-thon. I am pleased with the progress I've made. Here's my progress for the third day:

* Heartless by Gail Carriger, finished! 143 pages

* The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan, finished! 440 pages

Day 3 total: 583

Read-a-thon completed books:

* The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: 387 pages

* Halo by Alexandra Adornetto: 77 pages

* Heartless by Gail Carriger: 374 pages

* The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan: 440 pages

Total pages: 1,278 pages

Yay! I completed my goal plus a little bit more with finishing Halo.

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Last Mini-Challenge! This one comes from Ashley of Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing. The challenge is to recommend 2 books: one from anywhere and the second from those read for the read-a-thon.

Random read: Feed by Mira Grant

This is one of the best zombie books I have ever read. It's both cerebral with its scientific detail about the manmade accidental virus that turns people into zombies and action packed with its scenes of terrifying zombies and government conspiracies. This book will make you cringe with terror and also cry with sorrow. The writing just sucks you in and won't let go until you've finished the book. The second volume in the series is also excellent.

Read-a-thon read: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This book took me the least amount of time to read because I simply couldn't put it down. It's about rival magicians fighting through their proteges and using the Night Circus as their playing field. The magic contained in the story is marvelous and like no other depiction I have read. The writing is unique, jumping through time, focusing on different characters, and even small portions where you walk through the circus within the story and marvel at the oddities and magic. There is tragic love, mystery, and a monochromatic circus at the center of it all. If you like The Prestige or The Illusionist or Big Fish, you will like the Night Circus.

Once Upon a Read-a-thon: Progress and Mini Challenge 2

Well, today was certainly not as productive reading wise as yesterday, mostly due to the fact that I spent 4 hours in my friends pool, ate lots of pizza, then watched the most awful movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix.

I only read 200 more pages of Heartless, bringing my page total up to 695.

My goal for today is to finish Heartless and also finish The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan. Wish me luck!

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Mini Challenge 2!

YA Bliss asks for top 3 love triangles!

1) Peeta and Gale from The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collings: I was disappointed when one of them was pretty much sabotaged in Mockingjay, but both of these boys were likeable and I rooted a little for both. I was always Team Gale though.

2) Eric and Bill from the Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris: I always go back and forth with them. Bill was really nice in the beginning, but messed up big time and became a huge jerk. By the latest book, he's become likeable again and definitely rivals Eric. I loved Eric ever since he lost his memory in the fourth book, but in the latest books, he's proved to be kind of awful. I think Sookie will return to Bill, but I like both characters so much that I don't really care who she ends up with.

3) Jared and Ian from The Host by Stephenie Meyer: This is the first book I've read where there is a love quadrangle thing with 4 people in 3 bodies. It's a weird thing when Jared loves the person in the body, but not the owner of the body and vice versa with Ian. I really loved this book and felt that the love quadrangle thingy was dealt with rather well and made for some really interesting situations I never would have thought of.

Once Upon a Read-a-thon: Progress and Mini Challenge

The first day of the Read-a-thon is over and I've been having so much fun! It's so nice just to take a day and read and relax. Here are the books I've read so far:

* The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - finished! 387 pages

* Halo by Alexandra Adornetto - started last week, finished! 77 pages

* Heartless by Gail Carriger - just started, 31 pages

Total pages: 495

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Mini Challenge Time!

Baily at IBBookBlogging asks about mythology.

1) What is your favorite type of myth?

As a kid, I really liked Greek and Egyptian mythology. Now that I've studied mythology, I find that Sumerian and Meso-American mythologies aren't as well known, but are absolutely fascinating.

2) What is your favorite book with some type of mythology in it?

My favorite book with mythology in it is The Sandman Volume 9: The Kindly Ones. The story focuses on Hippolyta wrongly sending the Furies to Morpheus for kidnapping her son. It's one of my favorite in the series and I would highly recommend the entire series to everyone. My inner comparative world lit geek jumps for joy every time I read them because different mythologies and other famous texts can be seen threading through each installment.

Once Upon a Read-a-thon

I'm participating in a wonderful read-a-thon that starts next Monday hosted by Reading Angel, Candace's Book Blog, and Pure Imagination. The thing that makes this read-a-thon special for me is that it spans three days. I've been interested in other read-a-thons, but they usually take place on a day where I'm busy and can't dedicate much time for reading.

Here are some books you can expect to see me reading next week:

1) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2) The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

3) Heartless by Gail Carriger

This is hopefully just to begin and maybe other books will be included as well. I'm so excited!!! If you're interested in joining, go here and follow the instructions. You can win books or swag packs along the way as long as you participate in one challenge and make one progress post.

Blood Magic

Silla Kennicot receives a package in the mail from someone named the Deacon. It contains a notebook from her father full of spells that require Latin incantations, various arcane ingredients, and blood. Her father was a mild mannered Latin professor before he killed his wife and himself. Silla hasn't been the same since and this book just confuses her more. She tries a simple spell in the book and it actually works. Nick sees her do the spell and is attracted to and repelled by her at the same time. He recently moved to the town because of his annoying stepmother and he isn't happy in the small town when he's used to a bustling big city. Silla and Nick grow closer together and discover that both of their families used this blood magic. They, along with Silla's brother Reese, experiment with the magic. All is going well until a woman named Josephine wants Silla's father's body and possesses their friends and various animals to terrify and attack them. Will they be strong enough to beat Josephine when everyone things they are crazy and no one can help them?

I first heard of Blood Magic from a post by Maggie Stiefvater recommending it. I was intrigued by the premise and amused with the video Maggie made. Blood Magic is a wonderful debut for Tessa Gratton. In the mass of teen paranormal novels, this one stands out and separates itself from the pack. There were a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way that aren't expected in the genre. In paranormal romances, the action and conflict tend to be not too dark or intense. This is not the case with Blood Magic. The villain is intensely, overwhelmingly evil. There is a point where Silla is literally doesn't trust anyone or anything around her because of the power to possess living things that our villain uses so masterfully. There were things done in the story that I never thought I would read in a YA book. Her methods along with the very nature of using blood for magic makes this the start of a deliciously dark series.

The characters were excellent and they were the driving force of the novel. Silla and Nick are both out of their element. The death of Silla's parents casts a shadow over her and her classmates think maybe whatever madness possessed her father is in her. She gets through the day by imagining different colored masks to go over her face that symbolizes the fake emotion she wants to exude. When she gets to know Nick, her masks shatter, leaving her true feelings bare. I loved the mask image throughout the novel and I can't express how much I love the name Drusilla. Nick is just as lost, but in a very different way. He was uprooted from his home in Chicago and forced to live in a small town where everyone thinks he's weird and he's at the bottom of the pecking order. He and his stepmother don't get along at all and he feels that she's just using his father. These two outcasts just fit together as a couple without any weird dominance issues or abuse. They made each other whole and gave each other a place in the world where they belonged.

The one complaint I have about the book is that the writing was too consistent, which is usually a good thing. Silla and Nick have alternating chapters that they narrate with diary entries from the villain sporadically inserted between. When reading, I couldn't tell whose narrative I was reading just based on the writing except for the diary entries. When writing in this format, the two voices should be more distinct so I don't have to keep flipping the beginning of the chapter to see what point of view it's coming from.

Blood Magic is a wonderful and dark debut novel. Those not afraid of a little blood will love this book. I eagerly look forward to whatever Tessa Gratton does next.

My rating 4.5/5 fishmuffins

Internet Awesomeness 8

More awesomeness from the internets!!!

1) I've loved Kirby Krackle's song Ring Capacity for about a year now. It tells the story of Green Lantern's origins and a battle with Sinestro plus it's super catchy. I was really hoping it would be the song for the new Green Lantern film, but it sadly wasn't. Fortunately, we can all still enjoy their awesome video and hope maybe the next nerd film will feature a song of theirs.

2) One of my favorite Evelyn Evelyn songs is Sandy Fishnets, but it seems to be kind of an ignored song because it's depressing and disturbing. Vince Mascoli made an animated video for the song that I thoroughly enjoy in a simple mostly monochromatic color palate. My favorite part is the ocean sequence which has vibrant colors and a completely different style to greatly differentiate the fantasy world from their bleak reality.

3) Neil Gaiman is awesome. period. So when he makes a video threatening war with Britain if the Onion doesn't get a Pulitzer prize, it's by default awesome. He comes off so crazily charming.

4) This video by Jackson Pearce, author of Sisters Red and the upcoming Sweetly, is made of win. She frankly describes the ridiculousness of the gay marriage debate and urges people to use their voices and make their opinions heard. Gay marriage is now legal in New York (YAY!) which is surprising considering it's a Republican controlled state. Hopefully other states will follow and prove that the Constitution actually matters.

Hope you enjoyed the awesomeness for this week!

Boyfriend from Hell

Megan Barnett is best friends with her mother, Suze and they do practically everything together. They start to drift apart when Suze decides to starts dating for the first time in ten years. Megan is utterly humiliated at the prospect of her own mother having a boyfriend before her. Not only that, but her two best friends, Matt and Erin, have decided to date too. Awkward! Then two mysterious men enter the Barnett women's lives. First, there's Guy Matson, Megan's new classmate: supremely hot and able to miraculously be a nerdy Mathlete and still retain a high level of cool. Next is Armando, the handsome art dealer Suze meets by chance. He's attractive, but something is a little bit off with him and Megan decides to investigate. One of them is Satan and Megan has to figure out which before either she or her mother gets dragged to Hell. Is it even possible to defeat Satan?

Boyfriend from Hell is obviously a paranormal novel, but it's grounded in reality and deals with situations that everyone can relate to. It was the normal, everyday aspects that kept me interested and reading because I had similar experiences when I was younger. Megan is a teenager and her relationships with all the important people in her life are changing. She suddenly has to deal with her mother's dating and the fact that she is no longer the sole focus of her mother's life. They used to be really close friends and now her inability to deal with the situation is putting a rift between them. Her friends Matt and Erin started dating and it puts a strain on their relationship with Megan. In both cases, Megan feels jealous and left out. Her life seems static while everyone changes and it makes her uncomfortable. The problems with her mother and her friends stems from her trying to deny and not acknowledge those feelings, which makes them grow and build until they explode over everything. Megan acts very childish and practically intolerable at first, but really matures and grows as a person by the end of the novel. I think everyone comes to a point where the relationship with their parents and friends changes just because of the nature of the transition from childhood to adulthood.

I really liked the supernatural and mystery aspects of the novel even though they weren't showcased until the last half of the novel. The devil and his creepy cult made for some good, but not too dark horror. I haven't read a lot of fiction where the devil is character that isn't over 100 years old, but the depiction of the devil was believable and dangerous without being over the top. This book had some twists and turns that I didn't expect, which is impressive. Not many books catch me off guard like that. The resolution was bittersweet and left a nice setup for the next novel, Earth Angel.

E. Van Lowe's fluid and masterful writing made this book one that I needed to finish. He captures the voice of a teenage girl authentically with Megan, flaws and all. I look forward to what's next for these characters in the next book, Earth Angel. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys young adult fiction.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins