Friday 56: August 18, 2017

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are simple:

  • Grab a book, any book (I, personally, prefer to use my current read.)
  • Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that’s ok.)
  • Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it)
  • Post it

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
(Strange the Dreamer, book 1)

Without his books, Lazlo felt as though a vital link to his dream had been cut.

WWW Wednesday: August 16, 2017

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:  Crashed (Cold Awakening, book 2) by Robin Wasserman
Lia is slowly becoming slightly less annoying, so that’s good news! Jude, on the other hand, is not getting any less annoying.

I’ve taken to entertaining myself by shipping Lia and Riley. That is to say, I don’t actually care whether they date or just form a good friendship, as long as one of those things happens!

I just wish Lia would try to figure things out a bit more!

I’m glad I got myself back to this series. Not sure where I’m going to get the third book in the trilogy though! (My library doesn’t have it…)

Specials (Uglies, book 3) by Scott Westerfeld
This is my favorite book in the Uglies series. I find the Specials fascinating.

I also like that we get to see a lot more of Shay in this one like we did back in Uglies. I know I’m not exactly meant to like her, but I really do.

I feel I should warn potential readers:
There are mentions of self-harm that could be triggering to some readers. The narration doesn’t seem to portray it as a good thing, but some of the characters do.

Persuasion by Jane Austen
And as will probably be the case for most of the rest of the year, I’m still working my way slowly through Persuasion. I really hope something interesting happens so I can find the will to read more than one chapter a week!

Recently Finished:  Pretties (Uglies, book 2) by Scott Westerfeld
I’ve read this one 2 or 3 times now (2 that I have a record of, but I could swear I read it another time before…)

Despite all the New Pretty slang that makes everything they talk/think about sound vapid and stupid, I really enjoy watching Tally work her way through problems and situations.

I do wish she would have thought of Shay a little more often! Or at least, would have acted on those thoughts. Not that I’m shocked, she did the same thing back in Uglies. Tally tends to forget Shay whenever she meets a guy.

Again I should mention a trigger warning for self-harm, although there are much fewer mentions in Pretties than in Specials.

The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, book 1) by Sarah Fine
I reviewed this one, read it here.

This is one of those books I liked and didn’t like at the same time. Or I should say, I liked the story, but I didn’t enjoy reading the book all that much. Luckily, it makes up for occasionally being boring or annoying by being a quick read with good themes.

And I really do look forward to getting the sequel from the library. I’m interested to see how things turn out, and also whether my predictions turn out to be true. (Also I guess I’m hoping it will be a little more enjoyable to read.)

Reading Next:  Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, book 1) by Laini Taylor
I was able to buy this book new, which is something I don’t get to do very often, but at the time that it came in I was in the middle of another series and I put this one aside for later and then forgot it like a dummy.

I had been considering rereading Laini’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, which is what reminded me that I still hadn’t gotten down to reading Strange!

I’m really looking forward to this book, and if booklr is to be believed, I won’t be disappointed.

I haven’t decided yet if I will go ahead and reread the fourth book in the Uglies series, Extras, or not. I guess it depends on if I find myself needing an easy reread while reading some other book.

First Lines Fridays: June 16, 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:

On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
(Strange the Dreamer, book 1)

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?

The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

Welcome to Weep.