Gary Paulsen
December 2017 Reading Wrap-Up
The Waterless Sea by Kate Constable
(The Chanters of Tremaris, book 2)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review: No
Reading Dates: December 11 – 12
Read Count: 2
Favorite Thing: Chanters vs. Pirates from the beginning.
Least Favorite Thing: Ooomg so many sexist desert-dwellers!
I started to reread this series earlier in the year and then just totally got side-tracked, but I’m back now! (Also I think I completely blocked out the end….)
My Posts About The Waterless Sea
The Tenth Power by Kate Constable
(The Chanters of Tremaris, book 3)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review: No
Reading Dates: December 12
Read Count: 2
Favorite Thing: The reveal about Cal’s family 🙂
Least Favorite Thing: Um… Keela’s entire original personality?
Man I zipped through this one! I was so anxious because I couldn’t remember in detail how this book went so I just devoured it!
I definitely recommend the Chanters of Tremaris series to anyone who likes YA Magical Fantasy and those who, like me, love stories about nature magic.
My Posts About The Tenth Power
The Swan Maiden by Heather Tomlinson
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Review: Kinda?
Reading Dates: December 12
Read Count: 2
Favorite Thing: Lavena had me cackling!
Least Favorite Thing: Seriously why does her entire family have to be Like That?? I just wanted to climb into the novel and systematically throttle them all…
I was actually surprised by how little of this story I remembered from when I first read it years ago.
My Posts About The Swan Maiden
The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan
(Trials of Apollo, book 1)
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Review: No
Reading Dates: November 23 – December 13
Read Count: 1
Favorite Thing: Actually dealt pretty well with the portrayal of a relationship between a child and their abusive parent.
Least Favorite Thing: Apollo is so fucking annoying. I miss Percy.
Seriously the only parts of the book I truly loved were the parts with Percy. I didn’t even realize he was my favorite, but he’s obviously my favorite. Lovably sarcastic dork….
My Posts About The Hidden Oracle
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
(Brian’s Saga, book 1)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review: No
Reading Dates: December 13
Read Count: 2
Favorite Thing: I love the way Brian thinks about things, like referring to the fire as his “new hungry friend”.
Least Favorite Thing: That moose was a dick. (Honestly, I can’t think of anything I didn’t like about the story/writing.)
I’m really glad I decided to try rereading this again. I wanted to see if I still liked it after all these years and I think I actually like it more now.
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao
(Rise of the Empress, book 1)
Rating: ★★★★★
Review: Yes
Reading Dates: December 15 – 18
Read Count: 1
Favorite Thing: Had me totally rooting for someone I knew was technically a villain!
Least Favorite Thing: I really didn’t need the mental images of killing small animals… (To be clear, it’s not often and it’s not like gratuitous slaughter, it’s just the descriptive language Julie C. Dao is good at made things a little too vivid for me for that particular couple scenes.)
I was so excited to get my hands on this book and it didn’t disappoint! I feel like wandering around town yelling about this book like a street preacher. Seriously, I recommend it to everyone, especially if you like fairy tale retellings.
(I almost put that my favorite thing was that there was literally zero white people in this entire novel, but I thought that might be a little tactless…oops!)
My Posts About Forest of a Thousand Lanterns
Mind Games by Kiersten White
(Mind Games, book 1)
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Review: No
Reading Dates: October 22 – December 23
Read Count: 1
Favorite Thing: Fia being all small and kick-ass.
Least Favorite Thing: It just didn’t hold my attention very well…
I think it’s a pretty decent book, there was just something that made it hard to stay in the story. Still it ended on a minor cliffhanger so I guess I’ll be reading the sequel at some point!
Hold Still by Nina LaCour
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review: No
Reading Dates: December 23 – 26
Read Count: 1
Favorite Thing: The photography.
Least Favorite Thing: I’m surprised to find there isn’t really anything I didn’t like from this book. Everything felt very honest.
I was afraid this book would be really hard to read because of the subject matter, but it moved really well and was a very honest portrayal of grief and recovery.
In Progress
First Lines Fridays: December 29, 2017
First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
- Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
- Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
- Finally… reveal the book!
First Lines:
Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below.
Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
(Brian’s Saga, book 1)
Brian is on his way to Canada to visit his estranged father when the pilot of his small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane in a lake–and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with only his clothing and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his departure.
Brian had been distraught over his parents’ impending divorce and the secret he carries about his mother, but now he is truly desolate and alone. Exhausted, terrified, and hungry, Brian struggles to find food and make a shelter for himself. He has no special knowledge of the woods, and he must find a new kind of awareness and patience as he meets each day’s challenges. Is the water safe to drink? Are the berries he finds poisonous?
Slowly, Brian learns to turn adversity to his advantage–an invading porcupine unexpectedly shows him how to make fire, a devastating tornado shows him how to retrieve supplies from the submerged airplane. Most of all, Brian leaves behind the self-pity he has felt about his predicament as he summons the courage to stay alive.
Thursday Quotables: December 14, 2017
This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week; whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written.
If you keep walking back from good luck, he thought, you’ll come to bad luck.
Summary:
Brian is on his way to Canada to visit his estranged father when the pilot of his small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane in a lake–and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with only his clothing and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his departure.
Brian had been distraught over his parents’ impending divorce and the secret he carries about his mother, but now he is truly desolate and alone. Exhausted, terrified, and hungry, Brian struggles to find food and make a shelter for himself. He has no special knowledge of the woods, and he must find a new kind of awareness and patience as he meets each day’s challenges. Is the water safe to drink? Are the berries he finds poisonous?
Slowly, Brian learns to turn adversity to his advantage–an invading porcupine unexpectedly shows him how to make fire, a devastating tornado shows him how to retrieve supplies from the submerged airplane. Most of all, Brian leaves behind the self-pity he has felt about his predicament as he summons the courage to stay alive.
Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!
Completed: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I first read this as a child, for school, and remembered liking it. I decided to reread it to see if it was still as good and I really like it still. I hope it’s still required reading for kids. (I actually remember learning a lot of new things from this book.) And I definitely recommend this for older readers as well.
Darkestwings Reads