Seven Deadly Sins of Reading Tag

1. Greed: What are your most expensive and inexpensive books?


My most expensive book is probably a school textbook, but I have never bought a book over 20 dollars. Most inexpensive book is A Midsummer Night's Dream, I got it for a dollar and some cents at Barnes and Noble because I had a giftcard.

2. Wrath: What author do you have a love/hate relationship with?


John Green is my love/hate relationship, because I love his writing, but his stories are easy to see the solution of. That's probably is just me, but I love The Fault in Our Stars, but Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns were a bad experience for me.

3. Gluttony: What book have you deliciously devoured over and over with no shame whatsoever?

I wouldn't say there was no shame whatsoever, but I was one of those Twilight fans. I was hooked for a couple months or so, but now I look back and think,"What could I have possibly like about that series?" Don't judge me.

4. Sloth: What book have you neglected to read due to laziness?

Forever by Maggie Stiefvater
A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Cinder by Marrisa Meyer

5. Pride: What book do you most talk about in order to sound like a very intellectual reader?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, just because it's a classic and is also one of my all time favorite novels.

6. Lust: What attributes do you find most attractive in male or female characters?

Confident guys are never a bad thing in a male character. Someone like Gus from The Fault in Our Stars.

7. Envy: What books would you most like to receive as a gift?

The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson and a new copy with a pretty cover of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Web Series You Should Be Watching on Youtube

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
I'm obsessed with this series. If you didn't know it's a modern day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and it's just wonderful. You should check it out,and like and subscribe, because they are really amazing actors, and crew. :D

Hipsterhood
I found out about this series over the summer and was so sad to see the season to finish. The second series is full of the Lizzie Bennet cast and it really should get more attention on YouTube, but it has a low viewer count that I just wish will get high and higher. BTW the guy that plays William Darcy, will also be in season two, but they need to get more money on their kickstarter account. Help out if you can, but you don't have to. I forgot to say it's a love story about two hipsters in California. Wonderful in every way, go watch it.

Squaresville
This series just came back from a few months long inbetween season break. The show also has the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Lydia in it, Mary Kate Wiles. She is an amazing actor, and this series is the epitome of teenage life and is ridiculously hilarious.

I name these series to spread the word of what I love. Please check them out and help them if you like them as much I as I do. :D

Love and Hugs,
Clara

Cinders and Sapphires by Leila Rasheed (At Somerton #1) Review

Rose Cliffe has never met a young lady like her new mistress. Clever, rich, and beautiful, Ada Averley treats Rose as an equal. And Rose could use a friend. Especially now that she, at barely sixteen, has risen to the position of ladies’ maid. Rose knows she should be grateful to have a place at a house like Somerton. Still, she can’t help but wonder what her life might have been had she been born a lady, like Ada.

For the first time in a decade, the Averleys have returned to Somerton, their majestic ancestral estate. But terrible scandal has followed Ada’s beloved father all the way from India. Now Ada finds herself torn between her own happiness and her family’s honor. Only she has the power to restore the Averley name—but it would mean giving up her one true love . . . someone she could never persuade her father to accept.

Sumptuous and enticing, the first novel in the At Somerton series introduces two worlds, utterly different yet entangled, where ruthless ambition, forbidden attraction, and unspoken dreams are hidden behind dutiful smiles and glittering jewels. All those secrets are waiting . . . at Somerton.

from goodreads


I received an email a few weeks back from netgalley. They were promoting this new young adult novel from Disney-Hyperion. The main thing that made me want to read it was that it was in that costume drama category, that I was and still kind of am still interested in. The selling point was that it is for the younger readers of Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey.

I really loved this book, and I wish I can compare it to another costume drama novel, but all I have is watching a lot of costume drama television series from the BBC. I find that this novel is wonderful for learning about that Regency era and the people that are involved in an old English lord's manor. Leila Rasheed's writing is passable. I don't think it's anything beyond the normal, but I did love the flow that came with reading a novel that suppose to have that old English voice in it. That factor was spot on.

Cinders and Sapphires have gotten me into looking for costume drama novels(please tell me the correct genre of novels like these, I don't know what else to call them besides costume dramas). I think that point of view change was sufficient and used 'correctly' in the novel, though I'm not that big of a fan of point of view change. The characters were well written, and because of a huge family and servants that live in the manor, it took sometime to remember who was who, but you can manage just fine.

I loved this book, and I think it's a wonderful series to read inbetween those times when costume drama shows are off air, and you need something to wet your appetite. So Leila Rasheed's first installment of At Somerton gets a head nods, thumbs up. (4 out of 5)

Don't Quote Me (#23)

Paper Towns by John Green Review

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Q gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.


Paper Towns is the third book I've read written by John Green. I loved the Fault in Our Stars, but was slightly disappointed in Looking for Alaska. I had high hopes, and it did meet those expectations and didn't at the same time.

from goodreads

I feel like I praise John Green a lot because he wrote my favorite book, The Fault in Our Stars, but Paper Towns was the book that made me really notice that he had some skill. The entire book was well written, but the only problem I had with it was that it didn't make me keep on reading. That sounds terrible, but it's true. I could not finish reading it, because the book was a constant of okay, fine, school life, doo-dads, that did not feel suspenseful or interesting enough to keep me reading.

John Green writes young adult books that have some what smart characters, while having so many pranks, and adolescent things that make me laugh. There wasn't one character that stood out to me as my favorite or anything, because like I said the entire book was like a roller coaster that was extremely high off the ground, but had no twists and turns. The speed could match one of a golf cart on high.

My favorite part was the humor. I love the fact that there are those little things that make it have its own identity. The Black Santas were my favorite story, among Q's stories.

I don't have much to say for Paper Towns, but I'd give it a head shakes, thumb down, shoulders shrug. (2 out of 5)

Love Affair with Your Favorite Book

This Thursday is Valentine's Day, love is in the air as they say. I however am and have been single since the little time I have been on this Earth. If you are like me, and find Valentine's Day seriously boring and stupid, and would rather read a book. Here are some books that will hopefully make you feel better on Valentine's Day.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
This book is quite the heart breaker, and if you aren't afraid to laugh and cry over a fictional guy, then read it


Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.



from goodreads



Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
A kind of cheesy love story wrapped up in this crazy fantasy world somehow works, and is one of my favorite novels of 2012.


Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

from goodreads

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater 
Another crier, but it's one of few books that I can cuddle up on my bed and read the entire night.

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

from goodreads

Cursed by Bethany R. Myers
This author was someone I found online, and have been reading her short stories a lot. It's a short read, but a good one in my opinion.

Murderous witches. Cannibalistic dwarfs. Bloodthirsty dragons. Sixteen year old, skullery maid   Tess will have to battle them all because she has been cursed by true love's kiss. Read it for free.

from BR Myers Blog

Update: Where have I been the entire month of January?

Lately I've been reading a lot of books that I haven't really liked so much. As the effects of that becomes constant over the last month or so, it has been hard for me to find time to want to blog. Though, I want to continue, but will not promise any five day posts like I did in the previous year.

So what am I doing at the moment?

1. Reading Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
2. Paper Towns by John Green review to come
3. Don't Quote Me meme will hopefully to come back this Wednesday
4. I've decided to leave my nanowrimo novel where it is at the moment
5. Busgirl Blues by Bethany R. Myers review to come when story is fully posted
6. Cinders and Sapphires by Leila Rasheed review to come
7. Update on webseires on Youtube that you should be watching