November Rewind

In November I read 8 books. They were:

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs edited by Dawn O’Porter
Lets pretend this Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
Unsouled by Neal Shusterman
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Billy and Me by Giovanna Fletcher
The Casual Vacancy by J.k. Rowling
Slated by Terri Terry

After waiting a year for it to be published and then a week searching for a copy I finally got to read Unsouled by Neal shusterman. It was so good. I won’t say too much here  because I’m going to review it now that I’m not completely swamped with coursework.  The only bad thing is that I now have to wait another year for the final book to be published.

Most of the books I read in November were new to me. The two books I reread were The Casual Vacancy and Catching Fire. If you want to know what I thought about The Casual Vacancy you can read my review here.

I ended up going to see the film adaptation of Catching Fire the other day. It was well done but I thought that there were far to many kisses between Katniss and Gale. It and the previous film would have been a much better if the film makers had concentrated less on the love triangle and it had a certificate higher than a 12A.

In December I’m going to have to read at least 10 books because I challenged myself to read 75 books this year and I’m currently on 65 books.  I’ve had that little bar on Goodreads telling me that I’m behind schedule for about a month now.

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Booktubeathon Wrap up

When I wrote that post last Monday I was so hopeful that I was going to read everything and complete most of the challenges. But then I got an email from my teacher telling me that I had about 14 hours to complete 9 different pieces of work. So I spent the first two days of the Booktubeathon stressed out and not sleeping to get the work done.

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These were the books I was planning to read. I managed to finish reading Unwind, got about 4 chapters into A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold and gave up on the Virgin Suicides. I gave up on it because the writing style was difficult & slow and I just wasn’t very interested.

Instead of rereading Wide Sargasso Sea I read Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. On Saturday I bought Lola and the Boy Next Door and I read it in one sitting.

Altogether I read 3 books during the Booktubeathon. This whole thing has made me realise that if I put pressure on myself to read I end up not wanting to read. Reading is something that I do because I enjoy it, not because I have to.

Booktubeathon

Hi, sorry for the month long hiatus. I’ve spent that time desperately trying to complete work so that I’ll pass my course with good enough grades to go to university. Anyway moving on, today is the start of the week long BookTubeAThon.

The BookTubeAThon was created by two booktubers Ariel Bissett and Raeleen Lemay and the goal is to read as many books as you can between the 15th – 21st July. There are also 7 different challenges.

  1. Read 300 pages a day
  2. Read a book with over 500 pages
  3. Reread a book
  4. Finish a series or trilogy
  5. Read a book that’s been on your selves for ages
  6. Listen to an audio book
  7. Read a classic

I’ve decided I’m going to read four books: Unwind by Neal Shusterman, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold by George R.R Martin. Unwind will be a reread, Wide Sargasso Sea is a classic and A storm of swords is over 500 pages long.

Review: Unwholly

002Title: Unwholly
Author: Neal Shusterman
Genre: Dystopian, YA
Number of pages: 402

In a society where unwanted and troublesome teens are salvaged for their body parts, Connor, Risa and Lev continue to fight against the system that would ‘unwind’ them.

Thanks to their high-profile revolt at the Happy Jack Harvest Camp, people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding.
Whilst Connor, Risa and Lev are continuing to try helping others in their position, we meet new characters Cam, a Rewind and Nelson, a bitter and sadistic bounty hunter who has already crossed paths with Connor.

Unwholly is the sequel to Unwind, a dystopian novel in which unwanted teenagers between the ages of 13 -18 can be unwound so that they are no longer a problem.  I first read Unwind back in march last year and really enjoyed it so I was happy to find out that Unwholly was being published in the August of the same year.

I had pretty high expectations for Unwholly and it didn’t disappoint. The plot was a good as Unwind and not at all watered down like I thought it might be (based on all the more recent Dystopian’s that have been published).   It carries on from where Unwind finished, Connor and Risa are back in The Graveyard only it is now run by Connor and not The Admiral.

This book also introduces us to four new characters Starkey, Miracolina, Cam and Nelson. At first I felt really sorry for Starkey, an unwind whose parents never wanted him because he was storked but then he changed and I spent the whole book wanting to punch him.

The character that I found the most interesting was Cam. Cam has been rewound which basically means that he is made up entirely of body parts taken from people who have been unwound, like a modern day Frankenstein’s Monster. I liked the way he developed as a character, how he started off struggling to find words and make all the different parts of himself work together.

I really enjoyed this book and am kind of sad that I have to wait another year for the final book to come out. I definitely recommend the books of this trilogy.

March Rewind

In March I read 11 books. They were:

Sever by Lauren Destefano
Call The Midwife by Jennifer Worth
Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth
The Recruit by Robert Muchamore
Class A by Robert Muchamore
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
Maximum Security by Robert Muchamore
Love and Other Four Letter Words by Carolyn Mackler
The Killing by Robert Muchamore
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Divine Madness by Robert Muchamore

March was accidentally the month of rereads as only the first 3 books I read were new to me. I found Sever by Lauren Destefano quite disappointing.
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