re·view : Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2) by Laini Taylor
5 Stars.

syn·op·sis 

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

re·view 

So. let me tell you this : the first half of the book is just plain boring.

However, is necessary boredom..

You see, for them to get to the interesting stuff, the characters need to get there, it would be just weird if they got to that conclusion out of nowhere.

So yeah, is boring, but once you get to about half of the book, shit got REAL!

Also, the writing is as beautiful as ever, argh, wanted to put post its in every page. So so beautiful.

The plot was amazing, I love how Taylor managed to woven all those story lines together. And wholly mother of twists, did not see that ending coming!

Love aspect : ok, so this one is the one dividing point I saw going around. And no, there is no lovey dovey with Karou in this one, but Zuz and Mik were the cutest thing ever and I love the whole tasks he is doing. 

“So," he called to her back, "Just out of curiosity, you know, purely conversation and all, at what age will you be entertaining offers of marriage?"

"You think it'll be so easy?" she called back over her shoulder. "No way. There will be tasks. Like in a fairy tale."

"Sounds dangerous."

"Very, so think twice."

"No need," he said. "You're worth it.” 

Yeap.

There is also a whole new creepy level on this one, since is definitely not in human world and some of the images were plain bizarre. Also, was that a rape scene? 

Anyhoo, I think is enriches the story though, it is very high fantasy and with a little imagination turns those images very real.

As I said, the pacing suffered in the first half, but it was necessary. Once you pass that, it picks up a whole lot.

I love what the author did with the characters, I love every single one of them, even the ones I hate. I didn't know I could be this disgusted at a fictional character, but it happened.

Also, I love Akiva, I didn't love him before, but.. oh.. *sigh*

With all of the creepy and dark things, which cover most of the book, we still get glimpses of light..

“As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better."

"Or worse," said Liraz.

"Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse."

Hazael cut in. "My sister, Sunshine, and my brother, Light. You two should rally the ranks. You'll have us killing ourselves by morning.” 

Light, get it? Could not resist.

Love it, love it, love it. Go read it.

30 things to tell a book snob

  That is the title of a article that I read this week on Booktrust. I have been reading some of their articles for some time, and this one is spot on. I agree with every single word.
  The articles writer is Mat Haig and here it is:

30 things to tell a book snob

Posted 19 April 2013 by Matt Haig

It is World Book Night next week and World Book Night is a good thing, because it is fun and helps get books into the hands of people who wouldn't otherwise read them.

And people should read books. Books are good.

But many are intimidated. One of the reasons people are put off reading is snobbery. You know, the snobbery that says opera and lacrosse and Pinot Noir and jazz fusion and quails' eggs and literary fiction are for certain types of people and them alone?

There is something innately snobby about the world of books. There is the snobbery of literary over genre, of adult books over children's, of seriousness over comedy, of reality over fantasy, of Martin Amis over Stephen King. And it is unhealthy. If books ever die, snobbery would be standing over the corpse.

So here is my message to book snobs:

1. People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People who feel bad about reading will stop reading.

2. Snobbery leads to worse books. Pretentious writing and pretentious reading. Books as exclusive members clubs. Narrow genres. No inter-breeding. All that fascist nonsense that leads commercial writers to think it is okay to be lazy with words and for literary writers to think it is okay to be lazy with story.

3. If something is popular it can still be good. Just ask Shakespeare. Or the Beatles. Or peanut butter.

4. Get over the genre thing. The art world accepted that an artist could take from anywhere he or she wanted a long time ago. Roy Lichtenstein could turn comic strips into masterpieces back in 1961. Intelligence is not a question of subject but approach.

5. It is harder to be funny than to be serious. For instance, this is a serious sentence: 'After dinner, Alistair roamed the formal garden behind this unfamiliar house, wishing he had never betrayed Lorelei's trust.' That took me eight seconds to write. And yet I've been trying to write a funny sentence for three hours now, and I'm getting hungry.

6. Many of the greatest writers have been children's writers.

7. It is easy to say something to people who are exactly like you. A bigger challenge lies in locating that universal piece of all of us that wants to be wowed, and brought together by a great story. There isn't a human in the world who wouldn't enter the Sistine Chapel and not want to look up. Does that make Michelangelo a low-brow populist?

8. It does not matter about who the author is. The only thing a book should be judged on is the words inside.

9. Martin Amis once moaned on the radio that there were too many writers talking across the table to their readers rather than down to them. This was the point I went off Martin Amis.

10. You don't have to be serious about something to be serious about something.

11. You don't have to be realistic to be true.

12. You are one of 7,000,000,000 people in the world. You can never be above all of them. But you can be happy to belong.

13. The only people who fear people understanding what they are saying are people who have nothing really to say.

14. Books are not better for being misunderstood, any more than a building is better for having no door.

15. Shakespeare didn't go to university, and spelt his name six different ways. He also told jokes. (Bad ones, true, but you can't knock him for trying.)

16. Avoiding plot doesn't automatically make you clever. (See: Greene, Tolstoy, Shakespeare.)

17. Freedom is a process of knocking down walls. Tyranny is a process of building them.

18. There can be as much beauty in short (words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters) as long. Sparrows fly higher than peacocks.

19. Snobs are suckers, because they have superficial prejudices.

20. The book I am least proud of, that I didn't work hard enough on, was my most ostentatiously highbrow one.

21. Reading a certain book doesn't make you more intelligent any more than drinking absinthe makes you Van Gogh. It's how you read, as much as what you read.

22. Never make someone feel bad for not having read or not read something. Books are there to heal, not hurt.

23. Imagination is play. Snobbery is the opposite of play.

24. I used to be a snob. It made me unhappy.

25. Simple isn't always stupid. When I write a first draft it is complicated. There is mess. The second and third and fifteenth drafts try and get it to make sense, to trim away the frayed edges.

26. Stephen King was right. Books are 'portable magic'. And everyone loves magic.

27. Inclusion is harder than exclusion. Just ask a politician.

28. The brain can absorb many things. So can a novel.

29. For me, personally, the point of writing is to connect me to this world, to my fellow humans. We are all miles apart. We have no real means of connecting except via language. And the deepest form of language is storytelling.

30. The greatest stories appeal to our deepest selves, the parts of us snobbery can't reach, the parts that connect the child to the adult and the brain to the heart and reality to dreams. Stories, at their essence, are enemies of snobbery. And a book snob is the enemy of the book.

Original Post

BookTubers recommendations.

Ok, so here we go!

My favorite YA ladies! :)

Katytastic Vlogs!

Bookables!

SSandLetters recommends.

Crash Course Literature! :)

John Green (author of Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars), is the teacher!

Great videos about:

Romeo and Juliet

Great Gatsby and a bunch of cool stuff. 

Here is a Playlist with all of them, check it out!

They also have history, chemistry, biology and their own channel Vlogbrothers.

But lets face it, you know about them.. haha..

re·view : The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1) by Alexandra Bracken
5 Stars.

syn·op·sis 

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

re·view 

Oh.. so many feelings.

I had to give myself a couple of days before I wrote this, mainly because there are so many conflicted feelings happening.

I loved the writing, LOVED IT. There is something about the way Bracken writes that mixes the disturbing things in the book with such realism that gave me goosebumps.
When I started reading, all I could think of was XMan, which I thought could go very wrong, very fast. Surprisingly it didn't.
I loved the dark tone of the story, but what I love even more, was how well the little happy moments were written, the calm before the storm days were just SO beautiful.

The pacing is great, I was so sick reading this, even with half the NyQuil in the US, I still had to make myself put this down a couple of nights. You know, with the need to sleep and all.

Taking the writing out of the equation for a moment, the best thing was most definitely the characters. Their evolution is almost palpable, the way Ruby learns to take control, the way Zu grows in to herself, the confidence we see in Liam.. and Chubs, well Chubs is Chubs.. Love that name, Chubs :P
But the thing I want to talk about here is not even the characters we love, but the ones we hate. I don't know how Bracken did it, but I was actually disgusted to my bones of Martin, aaargh. Also the other orange, aaah, take them away from me!
Is it weird that I like that? That I like hating characters? Even Cate.. passive aggressive b***. 

Here is where I explain the conflicted emotions though.. I heard some people talking about this, and is mostly way they didn't like the book. This actually made the book better to me though.
And that is where the plot was going. They didn't really know anything or anyone, they were just looking for the Camp, but they didn't know how to find it, or what to do when they got there.
We also get the impression Liam wants to be in some king of resistance, but he doesn't know how to do it.
They mostly have a sh*t load of questions, but not enough answers. 
We don't really know what is going on aside from the main characters, but I'm ok with that.
This is book #1, I would have a problem if this was the final book and we didn't have answers(Pandemonium anyone?).
But we are seeing this world with Ruby's eyes, she is being in a concentration camp for 6 years, so I'm guessing the author will leave as to find out things when Ruby does. 
And for once, I love that.

re·view : Hallowed by Cynthia Hand

Hallowed (Unearthly #2) by Cynthia Hand
2.5 Stars.

syn·op·sis 

For months Clara Gardner trained to face the fire from her visions, but she wasn't prepared for the choice she had to make that day. And in the aftermath, she discovered that nothing about being part angel is as straightforward as she thought.

Now, torn between her love for Tucker and her complicated feelings about the roles she and Christian seem destined to play in a world that is both dangerous and beautiful, Clara struggles with a shocking revelation: Someone she loves will die in a matter of months. With her future uncertain, the only thing Clara knows for sure is that the fire was just the beginning.

In this compelling sequel to Unearthly, Cynthia Hand captures the joy of first love, the anguish of loss, and the confusion of becoming who you are.

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Review of Unearthly

Lets do this fast and sweet, because this series is turning in to Twilight FAST.

Good things:

- Writing

- That addictive quality that won't let the reader put the book down!

- Claras relationship with her mother.

Bad things:

- Watching someone sleep from the window (WTF?)

- Was it really needed for her (mom) to die for the whole book? I was a mess of sobs every time I picked this up.
- Love triangle just doesn't work.
- Jeffrey, Angela and Wendy. What the hell happened?

quote : The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

The little moments when being Brazilian is cool.