5 contemporary books I recommend to high schoolers

Now that my "journey" of high school is over, I'm so glad it's over  I decided to compile of list of contemporary books I recommend every high schooler to read. You know, books that teach you about life, books that are raw in emotion and don't shy away from the grotesque. Or the books that'll make you laugh or swoon or sigh in content.

But what all these books I'm going to list have in common is this; they are, above all, coming of age novels, and in my opinion, they accurately depict the journey that is adolescence. They helped me grow as a person and opened my eyes, if even by a fraction, but the effect on me was noticeable nonetheless.

Movie-Book Covers That I Like

It's a well-established opinion in the minds of readers that movie tie-in covers are a definite no-no. I don't think I've ever met someone who has preferred the movie book cover over the original, and for good reason. I mean, some of them are absolutely atrocious and while they're always telling us to not "judge a book by its cover," it's pretty hard to avoid when the cover looks like it was made by a second grader playing around on Paint.

This line of thinking brought up the question: are there any movie tie-in covers that I actually like? I couldn't think of any off the top of my head, so I had to do a bit of digging. I did in fact find a few that weren't a pain to look at, but up until this point I haven't found any that are better than the original.

New Design ~ Hiatus Is (Hopefully) Over

Well, I really do suck.

It's been about five months since I've last posted. (# of books read in this period: 2. What the actual hell) (I've practically forgotten how to read at this point). I'd like to call this sudden inactivity a hiatus, but I'd be lying if I said it was planned or it was to "take a break." In all honesty, I just lost my motivation to blog and read, and while I have been suspecting that it would happen sooner or later, I didn't think it would last this long.

Twitter Accounts You Need to Follow

I should be a complete troll and just leave my Twitter handle and be done with this post. HAHAHAHAHA. But don't worry, I'm not that self-centered. ;)

In the past few months or so these hilarious Twitter accounts have been popping up, and have been met with loads of popularity. They're snarky, sarcastic, and basically poke fun at all the good, bad, and the ugly trends in books, particularly in YA. All this while being surprisingly insightful. Here are some of them that you should follow asap:

Emotional Ratings

Let's get this out of the way: I've been guilty of emotional rating TONS of times. I try my utmost hardest to be a fair reviewer, but sometimes there is that one book that you can't help but feel passionately about, whether it be positive or negative passion.

What exactly is emotional rating? Well, according to Summer's Very Important and Very Accurate Dictionary, it's done by book reviewers when all reason is thrown to the wind and emotion is trusted to assign a book a rating.

There's two scenarios: one, a book that you know has bad writing, bad characterization, etc, but you follow what the book made you feel and bestow upon it a 5-star rating. Or, on the other hand, you know a book has a great plot and the writing is amazing but there's that one character that grinds your gears and makes you so angry that you had to give the book 1 star.

While I do do this (quite a lot, actually) in my defense I usually state in my review the goods and the bads regardless of my feelings about the book overall. With that said, I don't bother with reviews for a lot of the non-review books I read, so I wouldn't trust those if I were you. :3

Favorite Interior Book Designs

Many thanks and chocolate for Amelia from YA Bookologists for suggesting this topic! The blog has been dry lately and I've been sucked of my creative juices for the past week or so, and you saved it from dying! <3 you Amelia.

Going through the books on my non-existent bookshelf (it's actually a Leaning Tower of Books, but I'll save that for another day) I gathered books which I thought contained really pretty illustrations, title pages, chapter headings, etc. and took bad quality pictures while failing to keep my arm steady. Never said I was a photographer.

What I've Been Doing With My Life

Because I feel like I rarely do personal posts on here, here I am updating everyone on the goings-on in my life at the moment. And hey, I'm totally copying Amelia from YA Bookologist's post, hehehe (with her permission of course.)

Listening to: As per Amber from YA Indulgences's recommendations, I've been obsessing over these two amazing indie bands named Hurts and Kodaline. How have I not heard of them until now? They remind me a bit of Bastille, which I guess is why I'm liking them both so much.

Chocolate Book Tag

Did someone say chocolate? *rummages through house for KitKat and/or Reese's*

Okay, I'm back. Before I get distracted by my chocolate cravings again, let me start by saying thank you to Anne @ Anne Books for tagging me! Here we go:

Six Degrees of Seperation {Book Version}

In case you didn't know, I am a huge fan of the indie band, The Script.

And in celebration of their upcoming album release, I'm dedicating an entire post to them! And singing the lyrics! And relating everything to books!

I've been a fan of them for a while, and one of my all-time-favorite songs from them is Six Degrees of Separation, which is one of their more popular songs.

It's intended to be a break-up song, but as I was listening to it for the upteenth time the other day, it hit me how much it resembles that heartbreak every reader feels at the end of a particularly heart-crushing book.  

So I'm going to break the lyrics down, (mostly the chorus) and explain how it relates to the PAIN EVERY READER ENDURES. Do feel free to sing along! ;)

And because I know you're tempted:

Why I'm Stingy with 5-Star Ratings

Well, "stingy" is kind of a strong word, but hey, I'll be the first to admit that I'm prone to dramatics. Eh.

Yes, yes I am, Watson.

The other day, I was going through my Goodreads reviews and noticed how rarely I give out five stars--most of the time going the more safe route and giving the book 4.5 stars. And when I looked at my rating statistics, only 18% of my books are bestowed with the honor of 5 stars, while 26% are given 4 stars.

(In all honesty I believe the 18% to be a bit inflated, because when I love a series, say Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, I give the entire series five stars. So if it weren't for that, the percentage would most likely decline.)

Book Reviewers Would Make Awesome Authors.

I created this post because I've noticed many people are down in the blogging community, so it's meant to be a pretty positive post. *sprinkles pixie dust and showers you with chocolate*

This isn't intended to "toot my own horn" or to establish bloggers as the kings and queens of the interwebz or maybe it is - and what's wrong with being proud of who you are, anyway?

Also, I'm including both book reviewers and book bloggers. Not everyone is both, but I'm sure most of us are book reviewers.

So, here are the reasons I believe book bloggers/reviewers would make AWESOME authors:

Favorite Books from My Childhood

This post is inspired by Amber from Mile Long Bookshelf's wonderful post!

I've always been into reading. According to my mom, she wanted to instill in me a love for the written word because she has always hated books. (Don't really know how that's possible.) Because of this, I have an overabundance of children's books on the bookshelf in my garage that I've held dear to me since my childhood. 

Get ready to witness A BLAST FROM THE PAST: *dramatic background music*

(Aside: Tierra also created a neat flowchart showcasing "The Years of My Life (in books)." You should check it out!) 

Blogger Me vs. Real Me

This is not my normal type of post; it's not entirely bookish-related, but it does pertain to the book-blogging community.

The other day, I had an epiphany of sorts. I was musing on how ah-mazing it would be to attend BEA and meet tons of book bloggers in the flesh and blood. (No, that choice of phrase is not odd). And based on what other bloggers have said, it seems like a pretty cool experience to finally meet someone you've been interacting with online in person.  

In my highly improbable BEA daydream, I wondered how I would react to meeting other book bloggers. Would I be completely speechless, or would I be as talkative as I normally am?

How to Tame Your TBR Pile

Some days I find myself scrolling through my recommended books Goodreads and adding an endless amount of books to my To Be Read pile. Today happened to be one of those days and I was left with a TBR list of 104 books. As a rule I try to stay below 100 so I think it's time that I clear it all up a bit and at the same time teach you all my three easy steps so that you can also tame your TBR list!

The Official Guide to Taming Your TBR List (as told by Tierra)

Step One. Move books that you have already read or are currently reading. This one may sound simple, but there's always a chance that you accidentally put a book on the wrong place. I always find at least one book that shouldn't be where it is and today was no exception.

Was: 104 | Now: 103

Flowchart: The Years of my Life (in books)

I really liked Summer"s flowchart and it looked like something fun to do so I created one of my own with all my favourite books over the years. I really had to narrow down all the books I wanted to put on there because there's only so much room on a flowchart and I think I've managed to include only my nine ultimate favourites.

If the ages don't seem right then they probably aren't. My memory really isn't that exact so I sort of had to just guestimate it all a bit.

So without further ado here's my flowchart. (click to enlarge)

I'm curious, did anyone else share the same favourites as me or were yours different? I'd love to know!

Flowchart: So You Wanna Read YA Historical Fiction?

I'm not the best in graphics, but I've (somehow) created a flow chart composed of GOOD (at least in my opinion) young adult historical fiction novels. It's categorized by country, time period, or sub-genre, and hopefully it's not too straining on the eye.

So... I sort of stole the idea from Vulture's YA Novel Flowchart, but I narrowed it down to historical fiction, being that it is my favorite genre. I've read pretty much everything included in this flowchart, save for a couple.

Even if you aren't the biggest fan of historical fiction, I'm sure any one of these books will captivate you and trap you inspire you to read more books of this genre!

The Just Like Fate Tag

Thanks to Jack from The Book Stop, who is participating in the UK Just Like Fate blog tour, for tagging me! 

If by some chance of fate a book from your wish list or anything else you desire could magically fall into your hands, what would you like it to be?

An invitation to attend Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It would be a few years late, but hey, who wouldn't die if they were accepted into Hogwarts?

If you had the chance to go back in time and change a certain decision or choice, would you?

Meh, not really. I've watched enough time travel movies to know the consequences of that. 

I Have A New Co-Blogger!

I'm so glad to announce that I have a new social media co-blogger, who is (obviously) going to be in charge of social media. Her name is Tierra, and she's extremely sweet and very helpful. She blogs at Tangled in Words, and you've probably seen her around the book community. I'm really ecstatic to have her as a co-blogger and she'll also be posting on this blog from time to time.   

Click here to learn more about her!

She'll be in charge of our blog's Twitter.

2014 Bookish Goals!

You know, I'm actually quite proud of myself. I've completed my 2013 goal of reading 100 books, and even went over that to read 130 books. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of making a list of my goals, mostly because I don't want to feel pressured to do them, but I think this will help my blog improve over the next year (hopefully). So, here are my bookish goals in bullet point form for the year of 2014!

Top 2014 Book Releases I'm Crazy About

In no particular order:

1. Ruin and Rising, by Leigh Bardugo

 

2. Cress, by Marissa Meyer