Thursday Quotables

Thursday Quotables: February 2, 2017

LeeLeave a comment

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.

Its emptiness is more than the lack of living, breathing beings. It is the unread pages of the many books that reside on the shelves throughout the room I should hot have thought one could tell when books have gone unread, but after the company of Birchwood’s well-loved library it is as if I can hear these books whispering, their pages grasping and reaching for an audience.

Summary:

An ancient prophecy divides two sisters-

One good…

One evil…

Who will prevail?

Twin sisters Lia and Alice Milthorpe have just become orphans. They have also become enemies. As they discover their roles in a prophecy that has turned generations of sisters against each other, the girls find themselves entangled in a mystery that involves a tattoo-like mark, their parents’ deaths, a boy, a book, and a lifetime of secrets.

Lia and Alice don’t know whom they can trust.

They just know they can’t trust each other.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!

Thursday Quotables: January 19, 2017

Lee3 Comments

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.

Oozing Street was oddly cheerful, with flower boxes hanging from windowsills and houses painted bright colors; even the slaughterhouse that anchored it was an inviting robin’s-egg blue, and I resisted an odd impulse to go inside and ask for a tour.

Summary:

A boy with extraordinary powers. An army of deadly monsters. An epic battle for the future of peculiardom.

The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls. As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.

They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all. Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!

Thursday Quotables: January 12, 2017

LeeLeave a comment

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.

I was moved by this new idea of my grandfather, not as a paranoiac gun nut or a secretive philanderer or a man who wasn’t there for his family, but as a wandering knight who risked his life for others, living out of cars and cheap motels, stalking lethal shadows, coming home shy a few bullets and marked with bruises he could never quite explain and nightmares he couldn’t talk about. For his many sacrifices, he received only scorn and suspicion form those he loved.

Summary:

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of curious photographs.

A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!

Thursday Quotables: December 15, 2016

LeeLeave a comment

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.

Elske screamed, too. But when Elske screamed, it was the war cry of the Volkaric that came out of her mouth, a howling like the voice of a wolf. The cry wound around the narrow streets as if they were in the wild and merciless northlands.

Summary:

Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt depicts the parallel quests of two extraordinary young women with power and compassion in this fourth and final book in the Tales of the Kingdom series.

Elske is a girl with no future—until her grandmother’s sacrifice saves her from certain death. Beriel is an imperious princess, determined to claim the kingdom that is her birthright. Fate brings them together, both exiles, one servant to the other. Elske offers Beriel steadfast loyalty and courage, precious qualities in a dangerous quest to regain the throne she has been denied by treachery. And for Elske, the handmaiden, Beriel’s proud example provides a perhaps even more precious gift—the strength to look within. As Elske seeks to find her true self and Beriel battles to reclaim what is rightfully hers, both discover the value, and the price, of reaching the journey’s end.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!

Thursday Quotables: December 1, 2016

LeeLeave a comment

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.

Oriel didn’t move. But inside of his head, all was movement, like a river running over rapids, searching for the way through, trying routes around rocks and over shallows, a turbulence of thought more rapid than he could follow. Griff, he knew, would do and say nothing until he heard Oriel’s choice.

Summary:

He was special. Different. Since he first came to the island as a young boy, he stood out among the rest. No matter how torturous the Damall’s beatings were he would not let his fear show. He was brave.

Griff watched from afar – admiring the strength of this boy who didn’t have a name. Griff, instead, hid out of sight, keeping quiet, avoiding attention.

But neither courage nor cowering would spare them from the incessant cruelty of the Damall. When the two unlikely friends realize they must escape or face a lifetime of brutality, they flee from the island, taking with them the most cherished possession of the Damall: the beryl – a green gemstone engraved with a falcon. Soon their prize binds their fates forever as they set off into a world more perilous than either could have imagined.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!

Thursday Quotables: November 10, 2016

LeeLeave a comment

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.

(Part One: ‘The City’)

If it had been a color, it might have been green. If it had touched her ears, it might have sounded rhythmic, like the creak of a rocking chair or drone of a bee. If it had a scent, it might have been sweet and drowsy, like fresh pine on the fire.

(Part Two: ‘The Wood’)

Rin thought of the crossbow bolt. Of the whoosh and sting of wind and fire heat and the man who would have killed her. Of pushing in front of Enna. Of almost dying. Of home and Ma and being farther away than the lands in tales, and maybe never going home. Of standing by a strange tree in a faraway wood with girls who spoke the language of fire. Of a queen of Kel who wanted them dead.

Summary:

Growing up in the Forest, Rin always turned to the trees when she needed peace or reassurance, even direction, until the day they seem to reject her. Rin is sure that something is wrong with her, something that is keeping her from feeling at home in the Forest, keeping her from trusting herself with anyone at all.

When her brother Razo returns to the city after a visit home, Rin accompanies him to the palace in hopes of finding a new sense of herself. But a mysterious threat haunts Bayern, and Rin is compelled to join the queen and her closest allies – magical girls Rin thinks of as the Fire Sisters – as they venture into the woods toward the kingdom of Kel … where someone wants them all dead.

Many beloved Bayern characters reappear in this story, but it is Rin’s own journey of discovering how to balance the good and the bad in herself that drives this compelling adventure.

Once again, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale brings readers to a world where great friendships, unexpected plot twists, and a little dose of magic make for incredible storytelling.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!