Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at Should be Reading and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three W’s!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading:  Skinned by Robin Wasserman (also published as ‘Frozen’)

I’m only about halfway through, and for the most part I’m enjoying myself.

The least part (the not enjoyable part) is that I just want Lia to move on and stop trying to have her old life with her lame friends and her prejudiced family. As far as I can tell, Lia cares about Lia more than anyone else, so why is it so hard for her to just move on? Why am I at the halfway point and still watching her try to fit in with a bunch of morons? Why has she not realized her relationship with Walker was crappy even before she was dead?

I did have a message from Robin Wasserman herself who confirmed both that Lia isn’t that aware of things outside what’s happening to her, and used the phrase “hasn’t quite yet [caught on]” so I have hope that soon Lia is going to realize the people from her old life don’t deserve to stay in her new one and she’ll MOVE ON so I can see some awesome Mechs-People.

Also I miss Quinn, I hope she comes back.

Recently Finished:  Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

I tried to like this book, I swear I did. But after two days of desperately trying to find something to like about any of these characters, I gave up.

I even reviewed it, which I normally wouldn’t do for something I couldn’t get more than 28 pages into, but the people deserve to know (or possibly I just wanted to complain).

You can read the review for yourself here.

I also found some problems regarding racism in some Goodreads reviews and at that point I just figured I couldn’t be asked to continue reading.

Reading Next:  Crashed by Robin Wasserman (also published as ‘Shattered’)

I will most likely get to this one Friday or Saturday and I’m pretty eager, even though the summary makes me think there’s going to be more Walker, who I really don’t enjoy… But maybe by the time this rolls around I’ll have grown to like him. (That laughter you hear in the distance is me totally not believing what I just said.)

I hate to say it, but I can’t really recommend this book to anyone. I’d have given it a lower rating than 2 stars, but I’m basing this on Goodreads ratings, which says 2 stars means “it was ok” and that’s basically what this book was. It was “ok” and nothing more.

My Posts About Prophecy of the Sisters

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Rating:  ★★★★☆
Reading Dates:  February 6 – 7
Read Count:  3
Favorite Thing:  The healing songs and the little illustrations included throughout.
Least Favorite Thing:  Okay, I’ve been sitting for an hour now trying to think of a thing I didn’t like (that wasn’t just a character I wasn’t even supposed to like) and I genuinely can’t think of anything! I’ll try again later.

I would recommend this book to fans of fairy tale retellings and middle grade fantasy. I’ve read it three separate times, which should give you an idea of how enjoyable it is. I chose it this time as a palate cleanser after the disappointment of Prophecy of the Sisters.

My Posts About Book of a Thousand Days

The Tale of Oriel by Cynthia Voigt
(Tales of the Kingdom, book 3)
Rating:  ★★★★★
Reading Dates:  December 7, 2016 – February 10, 2017
Read Count:  2
Favorite Thing:  The way Oriel thinks about things. Especially his likening himself to a river.
Least Favorite Thing:  Fucking Tintage….

This one took me a little while longer than usual because I hit a slump while I was reading it and even once I pulled myself out of it, I didn’t immediately go back to this one.

My Posts About The Tale of Oriel

The Tale of Elske by Cynthia Voigt
(Tales of the Kingdom, book 4)
Rating:  ★★★★★
Reading Dates:  February 11 – 19
Read Count:  3
Favorite Thing:  The fearless, matter-of-fact way Elske approaches each new experience.
Least Favorite Thing:  As Oriel would have said, Beriel used her friend (Elske) ill. (And not even just once, like damn….)

My Posts About The Tale of Elske

Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆
Reading Dates:  February 22 – 23
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  The usage of psychology terms and definitions for chapter headings was interesting.
Least Favorite Thing:  The characterization was crappy. All of the characters felt forced. Blech!

***ABANDONED***

I abandoned this book after trying for two days to read a novel that would normally take me only half a day and only making it to page 28. I give more details in my review.

My Posts About Psych Major Syndrome

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

College freshman and psychology major, Leigh Nolan, finds her problem-solving skills woefully inadequate when it comes to her increasingly tangled and complicated romantic relationships.

I don’t always rate abandoned books, and certainly don’t review them, because often I feel like I don’t have a right, having not read hardly any of it. However, with this book, I disliked it by page 28 and couldn’t find a single reason to keep reading, so I’m including a 1 star (did not like it) rating and a brief review.

I found the main character’s personality grating. She complained a lot, but actively chose to ignore her problems or any ways of fixing them, instead choosing to….you guessed it, complain some more! With all the complaints about herself and her life she had, she still somehow managed to talk about herself as if she thought she was super special, even to the extent of denigrating others to show how special she was. I’m aware that some character progression would probably be made later in the book, but when I tried to imagine forcing my way through this book long enough to get to that, I wanted to jump off a balcony…

The boyfriend was an asshole, which is more of a personal annoyance, not a flaw in the novel. It’s perfectly normal to have a character the audience isn’t supposed to like, but when it’s a book where I personally can’t even like the main character, it’s hard to deal with the annoying characters, too.

Actually all the side characters felt fairly…..not even just unrealistic, but affected and fake-interesting.

Basically the whole thing felt like the author was trying too hard to create uniqueness.

In an attempt to discover if the book would improve, I took to Goodreads reviews (which I didn’t bother with before reading because someone recommended this one to me personally, a choice which I regret) and discovered people to be pretty divided. A love it or hate it sort of thing.
But what settled the matter of keep slogging through or give up, was a review by Maggie whose resolve I applaud (they actually managed to finish the book). Their review covered a part of the book that got pretty racist. Not having made it this far into the book myself, I recommend you read their review for yourself here.

After reading about it, I realized I wasn’t willing to force my way through a book I didn’t like just to have to read a scene like that!

I will point out that someone in the comments of Maggie’s review says Alicia Thompson has admitted this scene was wrong and claimed to learn from it, but since I couldn’t find any proof of this anywhere, I’d take that with a grain of salt. If true, I’m glad, if not, I’m not surprised, and either way it doesn’t excuse anything or make me willing to finish this book.

View all my ratings and reviews on Goodreads

Lee is on page 28 of 336

What Are You Reading Wednesdays #WAYRW is a weekly feature on It’s A Reading Thing. Everyone is welcome to participate.

Grab the book you are currently reading and answer three questions:

1. What’s the name of your current read?
   
2. Go to page 34 in your book or 34% in your eBook and share a couple of sentences.
   
3. Would you like to live in the world that exists within your book? Why or why not?

1. Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson
2. Andrew was right. We probably wouldn’t have any problems if I didn’t go out of my way to create them.
3. No. I do not want to live in Leigh’s little world… Any of her little worlds. Also I do not want to live anywhere Andrew lives. I almost didn’t do WAYRW this week because I was still on page 19 of the book, but now I’m glad I did because I can point out that I was COMPLETELY RIGHT TO HATE THE BOYFRIEND ALREADY!

Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at Should be Reading and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three W’s!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading:  Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

I’m only on page 19 at this point because I took a break earlier to avoid having to actually read the boyfriend’s introductory scene after the 3 or so pages of inner monologue about him that made me 100% hate him from almost the first moment…

I’m also concerned this might not be my type of book. Specifically my type of main character… I just keep catching myself thinking she thinks she’s too special, but I can’t tell if I’m just a grumpy person who dislikes people too easily, or if it’s legit. If anyone has read this, please chime in!

Also does anyone know how Alicia Thompson pronounces her name? Is it the right Spanish way or the white English way or another way less common to me here in Texas? (I need to know for personal reasons.)

Recently Finished:  The Tale of Elske by Cynthia Voigt (Tales of the Kingdom, book 4)

I never actually managed to read the whole Tales of the Kingdom series in order in one sitting before (ignore that I took a giant break during Oriel) because I never had them all at once or I didn’t realize it was even a series before or whatever stupid reason. I love them so much and it was wonderful reading them in order finally. In fact, so far, I love them more every time I reread them!

I also wrote the first actual review of a book I like! For some reason I find it much harder to write a review for a book I enjoy. Perhaps because I’m not constantly picking them apart, but mostly because I suck at writing and reviewing.

And seriously, I recommend this entire series to everyone! (As previously mentioned, it’s a loosely-connected, non-magical fantasy series.)

Reading Next:  I LITERALLY CAN’T DECIDE IS ANYONE WILLING TO HELP ME???????

Lee is on page 19 of 336