Top Ten Books on Daisy's Spring 2013 TBR List!

Last week we told you that we were nominated for Best Meme and thanks to you guys -- we made the final run-off vote! You can now vote for Top Ten Tuesday in the finals with one click.

For more info & the TTT schedule

YAY! You can't really tell because of all the snow and nasty weather yet, but SPRING IS ALMOST HERE! I love Spring, it means sunshine, cute baby animals, cute new spring/summer clothes, new shoes and just generally a better time for someone who's ALWAYS cold.

Oh, and it always means new and exciting book releases ;)

This week's Top Ten Tuesday is all about the books on your Spring TBR list, either books you're meaning to read or new releases. I'm gonna go with the books I'm excited for releasing between March 20th and June 20th 2013!

The Sequels

Tarnish by Katherine Longshore: because OMG, I LOVED Gilt and cannot wait to get my hands on this one! And this one revolves around Anne Boleyn! I am slightly obsessed with Anne Boleyn.

Dance of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin: because let's be honest, Dance of the Red Death was insanely awesome and I still can't listen to We Are Young by Fun. without thinking of this book.

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo: Shadow and Bone was one of my favourite reads of 2012 and I am DYING to read Siege and Storm and find out what happens next for Aline, Mal and the Darkling (can you say perfect villain?)!

Rise by Anna Carey: the ending of Once nearly killed me! This book needs to be in my hands so I can find out how it'll all end and I'm desperately hoping for some form of happy in the ending!

The OMG FINALLY A NEW BOOK BY THIS AUTHOR

And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini: because I absolutely LOVED A Thousand Splendid Suns and I don't care what this amazing author writes about next, I will READ IT!

The Paranormal/Dystopian Fix

Linked by Imogen Howson: a lost twin sister and an intense connection AND running from the government? OF COURSE I'M IN!

Taken by Erin Bowman: I keep mentioning this book in TTT's, but I'm just fascinated by a world in which boys vanish on their 18th birthday!

The Perfect Spring Cute Contemporaries

The Summer I Became A Nerd by Leah Rae Miller: I love that it's about the main character giving in to her inner nerd :)

Thinking of You by Jill Mansell: because seriously, it's Jill Mansell and I LOVE her and her books always make me smile!

How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True by Sarah Strohmeyer: I love the title and it's about an internship at a theme park and it just sounds SO CUTE!

Going Vintage by Lindsey Leavitt: I ADORE Lindsey Leavitt's Princess For Hire series and this I've heard great things about this one, not in the least from our very own Jamie :)

So that's my list, any you're excited for as well? Anything I should add to my TBR list? Let me know!

Jamie Showers You With Mini-Reviews!

I've read a bunch of good book lately (with some stinkers for me personally in between) and I'd like to share the ones I've enjoyed with you!

If you are looking for a historical fiction novel that isn't TOO historical feeling...

Set in New Orleans in the 1950's, Out of the Easy is a story that off the bat gives you the vibe of the Big Easy that Josie knows -- dangerous, gritty and hard to leave. The characters in this novel are the shining star so I highly recommend for people who love characters that jump off the page. You'll find yourself falling in love with a whole host of characters you wouldn't normally love or meet. The plot meanders a little bit but Josie's story was captivating and you can't help but root for her. There's a little bit of everything -- mystery, romance, complicated mother-daughter issues and a girl's journey to fight for her dreams. (Goodreads | Full Review On My Blog)

If you are looking for a contemporary that is light and cute...

 Going Vintage was an adorably fun read of one girl's adventure in getting over her cheating boyfriend (who cheated with a girl ONLINE) by swearing off all things modern and tackling a list of goals she found that her grandmother wrote down when she was in high school. You can imagine the hilarious things that come up as she attempts to live free of all the modern technologies and conveniences we rely on. It's not a "change your life" type of read but perfect for when you need something fun to breeze through and I loved how Mallory struggled to figure out who SHE was outside of that relationship. Something even an old married lady can relate to! Lots of good character growth! ( Goodreads | Full Review On My Blog)

If you are looking for a contemporary that brings all the FEELS...

 This is one of my favorite books I've read so far this year. It's a slim book but brings quite the emotional rendering as the MC, Travis, is home on leave after being in Afghanistan for a year with the Marines and he's dealing with the various changes at home, the ways he has changed and the grief from losing his best friend and fellow Marine. It's one of the best male POVs I've ever read and Trish Doller is an amazing writer who will make you feel things so deep down in the depth of your heart and soul. This story will stick with me for a long time. It's beautiful, honest, achingly raw and one of those examples of why I love realistic fiction. Seriously a must read if you love contemporary YA! (Goodreads | Full Review On My Blog)

If you are looking for an intense read...

 Pretty Girl-13 is an intense read about a girl who was kidnapped when she was 13 and shows up in front of her home only to realize she's been missing for 3 years but has absolutely no memory of what happened or where she was. It's a heartbreaking mystery that is so intricately woven around our MC's very fragile mind which holds all the knowledge of what happened. If you are fascinated by psychology, this is a good one. It's really intense and disturbing but I didn't find it to be graphic. I couldn't put it down as I figured out things and had to watch Angie figure them out and then find out things right alongside her. All of the pieces of her kidnapping and captivity were just perfectly unraveled! (Goodreads | Full Review To Come Tomorrow On My Blog)


Have you read any of these? Heard of them? Tell me what you thought if you've read any of them!

Lori Reviews Start Here: Read Your Way into 25 Amazing Authors

Title: Start Here:  Read Your Way into 25 Amazing Authors

Editors:  Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Published: Book Riot Inc., 2012

Where I Got It:  The awesome people at Book Riot sent me a copy to review.

First I need to give a bit of background on this book so you all understand why it is so awesome.  The fantastic people over at BookRiot.com came up with the idea of using Kickstarter to fund a book that helped readers ease their way into reading some traditionally formidable authors.  Readers contributed thousands of dollars to the project.  So, it's the readers who made this book possible.  The result is a fantastic volume that I am so happy to have the chance to review.  And am happy to know it out there in the ether, available for anyone.

The various contributors to BookRiot, many of whom have their own fantastic blogs, wrote brief essays that introduce the author and why they are seen as challenging, why they are worth giving a chance, and they give three or four books that give you a good taste of the author and (hopefully) entice you to read more.  The sequence guides you through the author's works so that you get acquainted, a bit more familiar, then finally dive in the deep end, fully immersing yourself in their most iconic work.  The contributors all write in their typical fun and light, but still totally intelligent tone as they walk you through the likes of Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, and more contemporary writers like John Irving and Stephen King.  You get a sampling of twenty-five fantastic authors from classics to contemporary to comics.

My reaction--Upon receiving my review copy, I just had to flip through every author and see what books were recommended.  That curiosity satisfied, I went through more slowly and thoroughly read the essays in the book.  My interest has been piqued on so many authors!  On the authors I have read, I could see the wisdom in the argument.  I was familiar with the writing style of a couple of the contributors before reading Start Here, but I was so happy to see that all of the contributors were clear, concise, and very accessible as they sold you on a book or an author.  It was nice to feel like I was having a short conversation with someone like me, someone who enjoys good books, as opposed to having some stuffy old, out-of-touch scholar pontificate at me on the merits of certain books.

Currently (I believe) Start Here is only available in digital format.  And the book only costs $2.99, so it's totally a steal.  Buy it.  Support BookRiot.  (I was not paid, or asked to say that; I just really enjoy their website for book articles)  And maybehopefullypleasepleaseplease they'll come out with another volume with different authors.  I hope.

Top Ten Tuesday Suggestions!

Have a great TTT topic? Did an awesome topic for a freebie that you think others would enjoy? Share them here! We will credit you with the great idea if we think it could work! We do try to keep the topic fairly general so as not to exclude a huge group of readers. For example, Top Ten Vampire Books or Top Ten Books Set in Russia would be probably too specific for the group as a whole but would make a great freebie topic if you wanted to do it!

After almost 3 years of coming up with TTT topic (and not doing TOO much repeating)..I'm definitely hitting a wall. I'm going to revisit the old topics that we did WAY in the beginning but also holler if you like any of those and want it to come back.

Thanks you guys for making Top Ten Tuesday so much fun! I am always amazed at the great discussion and comments that I end up having here and on my own blog come Top Ten Tuesday day (not to mention the crazy amounts of books I end up adding).

Leave suggestions in the comments so others can weigh in! Or if you feel more comfortable, email me at brokeandbookish (at) gmail (dot) com!

Julia Reviews Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Title/Author: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Narrator: Wil Wheaton
Publisher/Year Published: 2011 by Random House Audio
How I got this book: I got this audiobook from the library
Why I read this book: It was our first book pick at the new bookclub at work.
Rating: 5 stars

I really liked this book and the production of it. So much so that once I was fully engaged I would turn it on and listen as I got ready for work. I'd listen until I had to turn it off then play it as soon as I could. I'd fall asleep every night lying in bed listening to the book. Hell, I even went to the gym to give me an excuse to read this book!

Ready Player One is the story of Wade Watts, an 18 year old senior who lives in a sort of dystopian America. It's 2044. The world ran out of fossil fuels and the unemployed roam, homeless and starving. People live in trailer parks where the trailers or RVs are just stacked on top of each other. The only happiness in anyone's life is a virtual reality video game called the OASIS.

Wade is known in the OASIS as his avatar Parzival (at least that is how I think it is spelled... I've never seen it written). He pretty much lives in the OASIS, even going to school there. But his primary goal and that of so many others is to participate in the contest.

The contest was started by James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS, on his death with a video challenging the world to find three keys and pass through three gates all hidden in the game. The winner would be his heir, gaining his fortune and pretty much control over the OASIS.

The story is centered around this contest as well as his relationships with his friends whom he has only interacted with online: Aech (said like the letter H) and Art3mis.

This book was an amazing surprise. I loved all of the questions it brought up with the parallels drawn to our current world and where we could end up technology wise. Not only that but it brought up some interesting points about identity and what makes a relationship real? We spend a lot of our time online interacting with people we may never have met face to face but does that make them any less of a friend then one we party with on Fridays?

The book itself is heavily based in the 1980s and cult geek culture. This was hugely entertaining. The contest pretty much brought about a resurgence of the 80s, so while set in the future it’s also steeped a very relatable past. I loved all the references to old video games and movies. Cline's creative ingenuity of the worlds both in and out of the OASIS are staggering. Like, who wouldn't want to take the place of their favorite movie character and act out the movie? That would be the best virtual reality game ever.

Also, being an Ohioan (like the author) I loved the spotlight Ohio has in this world as the technological mecca. It made me chuckle.

The themes in this book are pretty heavy actually, the primary one being the role technology plays in our life. I mean in this world, Wade and pretty much the rest of the world live in a virtual place where so many things are possible. In fact, the real world adapts to make the fake world easier to access. It's a chilling thought. Completely replacing reality, touch, face to face interaction with a fake version of it.

Don't get me wrong, virtual reality is cool and I could totally see myself doing the same things as these characters. That's why this book was so good. It felt like everything in it could happen.

That said I had a few issues with the length of time in the middle not focusing on the contest and instead on a boring romance subplot. And I also thought in the beginning that Wade was a little too smart for me to believe, but as the book went on and I thought about the level of commitment these people have to the contest, I believed it more.

I am being purposefully vague here because this book is awesome, and I don't want to spoil it. If you are even remotely intrigued by this concept, please check it out!

One final word on the audiobook. Wil Wheaton was the best narrator I could have hoped for in a story like this. His inflection and commitment to the story had me believing his was Wade. There could not have been a better narrator for this book. Though sometimes, hearing some of the dialogue or certain phrases did make me laugh out loud. I think overall though I enjoyed this being an audiobook because it forced me to slow down and actually listen to it. If I would have had this book in written form, I would have devoured it in a day.

So yeah, read this. Or listen to it. It is totally worth it.

A Cocktail & Conversation Time!

Every other Thursday here at the Broke & The Bookish is  A Cocktail & Conversation time. One of the TBTB members will pose a question to 2-3 of the other members of TB&TB crew about books, life, music, etc and then they'll answer and we can converse about it. So grab a cocktail & cozy up for some conversation. It's 5 o'clock somewhere, friends. 

Jana asks: Which bookish character reminds you the most of yourself?

Jamie says: Great question! A lot of times I'll see little bits and pieces of myself in different characters (Jessica Darling) but most recently I really saw a lot of myself in Allyson/Lulu in Gayle Forman's Just One Day. I just seriously GOT her in so many ways.

Tahleen says: Oh man, I have no idea. I almost feel bad comparing myself to a character in a book, since they are probably much more interesting than I am! Maybe when I was younger, Catherine from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, if only because I wanted real life to mimic the lives of the people I read about in books.

Lori says:  This is a really good question!  I think I have to go with Scarlett O'Hara from Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (shocker, I know).  I think we have a lot in common--admittedly selfish tendencies, but also the willingness to do what it takes when the chips are down.  If I'm not actually like her, I aspire to be like her because she is so strong, cunning, and daring, but also deeply flawed.

Paula says: Definitely Hermione Granger. I have always been and always will be the person who finished their assignments early and hung out with her textbooks. And maybe if I wish hard enough to be her... I'll suddenly find that my purse is bottomless!





What about you guys? Which characters remind you a bit of yourself?

Tahleen takes on a challenge

Hi all. This is my first year as an official teen librarian, and I'm loving it so far. But sometimes I feel this pressure, whether real or imagined, to keep up with all the teen books that are popular and relevant. I would say I've got a pretty vast knowledge of teen books out there, but I by no means have read them all. It would be almost impossible to do so and still have a life.

That said, this year I've decided to take on The Hub Reading Challenge 2013. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Hub, it's the official blog of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the YA division of the American Library Association. (You know, we have those conferences and stuff.) The basics of the challenge are this: Read 25 books out of the 84 books that won a Youth Media Award this year. The list of eligible titles are on the blog post I linked to above, if you are interested in joining or are curious to see what books made it onto the lists/won awards.

So far I've read the Big One, the Printz winner. I've only read a handful so far, but here is my progress:

In Darkness by Nick Lake, winner of the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award. This was an excellent and dark novel focusing on Shorty, a teenage gangster in Haiti buried under the rubble after the 2010 earthquake, and Toussaint L'Ouvreture, the man that led Haiti's slave revolt in the 1800s. Both stories are told in tandem, and are connected in surprising ways. What really made this book for me, though, were the characters. They might be killers and drug dealers, but they have loving and generous sides to them that are not apparent at first. I highly recommend this to anyone up for the challenging material.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, winner of a 2013 Alex Award. The Alex Awards are given to books published for an adult audience that have teen appeal. I really had a lot of fun reading this one, since it's mostly told in e-mails, letters, notes, and official reports, along with the occasional narration of 15-year-old Bee, daughter of the title character. The premise is Bernadette Fox, a recluse in Seattle, goes missing, and Bee decides she's going to try to find her. It's really funny, and I never knew exactly where it was going, which made it all the better.

Sparks: The Epic, Completely True Blue, (Almost) Holy Quest of Debbie by S.J. Adams, winner of a 2013 Stonewall Honor. An irreverent and hilarious adventure in the wilds of Des Moines, Iowa, centering on Debbie's realization that needs to tell her super-Christian best friend Lisa that she's in love with her. In desperation, Debbie decides to listen when classmate Emma tells her about the Church of Blue, a made-up religion she and her friend Tim have created. So they give a holy quest for Debbie: Find Lisa and tell her how she feels, before her douchy boyfriend Norman does. Personally, I wish all the Christians portrayed in this novel weren't such jerks (and in fact would act like Christians), but I can see why it was necessary for the story Adams tells. In any case, I don't really think there's much to be insulted by here, and it was fun.

Right now I'm working on Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, which won both the Stonewall Award and a Printz Honor this year. So far I like it very much, and again, what's winning me over are the characters, particularly Ari and his father. I'm guessing I'll finish it in the next day or so, since it's a really quick read despite its length (short chapters can be a blessing).

EDIT: I just finished Aristotle and Dante about 10 minutes ago and PLEASE go read it. It takes a lot for me to feel such a feeling of triumph and happiness at the end of a book, but this one did it. So far I'm thinking this year's Printz committee did a damn good job.

Have you read any of the award winners from this year? What challenges are you taking on right now?