Ten Finished Series I Have YET to Finish!

Hey, y'all! So once again, I'll be participating in Top 10 Tuesday, hosted on The Broke and the Bookish. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate last week because I was crazy-busy, but there's a freebie week coming up, so I might just use that topic for the freebie week, because it was "Characters I Didn't Click With," and I definitely have a lot of those!

This week's topic is about finished series that I have yet to finish (obvi, given the title). However, given the fact that I tend to marathon completed series, there aren't a ton that I've started and haven't finished. I'm going to list those, of course, but the rest of the list is going to be made up of ongoing series that I'm not caught up on (AKA I've started/completed one book, but have not read all the books that are out), because there are a good number of those.

1. The Poirot Series
by Agatha Christie

This series is 39 books long, so it makes sense that I haven't finished it yet, especially given that each book is its own individual story instead of having an overarching plot that makes you want to keep going until you finish the whole thing.

2. The Percy Jackson Series
by Rick Riordan

This is possibly the series that's been on this list for the longest. I started the series in junior high when only the first 3 books were out, and I just never kept up with the new releases. So now that it's been like 8 years since I've read the first 3, I probably just need to go back and re-read them and finish it. 

3. The Chaos Walking Trilogy
by Patrick Ness

This one is kinda a cop out, since I'm in the middle of marathoning the trilogy right now, but there just really aren't many completed series that I've started & not finished. 

4. The Chronicles of Prydain
by Lloyd Alexander

This is actually one where I read half of book 1 and then set it down because it wasn't really holding my attention. Since I do plan to read it eventually, I'm adding it to this list.

5. Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy
by Laini Taylor

Once again, like with the Chronicles of Prydain, I started the first book and haven't even finished that one yet. But I do think that I'll end up reading this series before I finish the Chronicles of Prydain.

6. The Bone Season Series
by Samantha Shannon

Now, we're starting to get into the ongoing series that I have yet to finish. And this one is just embarrassing, because I read book one back in November and LOVED it, and was eagerly anticipating The Mime Order. And then I got it and still haven't read it over SEVEN MONTHS LATER.

7. The Kingkiller Chronicle
by Patrick Rothfuss

I read The Name of the Wind in January of this year, and I really loved it. However, because of my TBR jar challenge, I ended up not being able to go right into The Wise Man's Fear and I still haven't read it. I think at this point, I'm going to just wait until book 3 comes out and then marathon the trilogy so that everything is fresh in my mind. I'd probably have to read them anyway, so I might as well wait.

8. The Diviners Series

by Libba Bray

I was actually completely caught up on this series until a little over a week ago, when the second book was released. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, but I'm hopefully going to be getting to it this month!

9. Miss Peregrine's Series

by Ransom Riggs

OK, so this one is kinda cheating, because I'm currently caught up on the series. However, the third book, Library of Souls, is going to be released in a few weeks and I have no intention of reading it right when it's released. I like the series, but it's definitely not one that I feel extremely attached to. I'm probably going to wait until the Miss Peregrine's movie is released and then re-read the first two and marathon through the third (which is the last one, right? Is it officially a trilogy?).

10. Mistborn
by Brandon Sanderson

OK, so literally everything on this list is a cop out. Oops. Anyway, I have completed (and LOVED) the Mistborn trilogy. But, I have yet to read the spinoff/companion series that also falls under the Mistborn name & takes place a few hundred years after Mistborn. The first book is the only one out right now, but book 2 is coming out in November.

So, that's it for my post on my top 10 series I haven't finished! Sorry that so many of them were cop-outs- I just really don't like leaving series unfinished!

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Book Discussions #3

*Pre-post disclaimer/apology: So, the books on this list are all books I read a while back. My intent with these was to get the post up ASAP but clearly, that didn't happen. Eventually, I just decided to go ahead and post it as-is. Not sure if I'm going to continue to do my written reviews this way. I might begin writing individual reviews instead. Anyway, enjoy the reviews!*

Hey, y'all! I'm back again for another Book Discussions post! In these posts, I do discussions for every single book I read. This was going to be just for stand-alones, but I realized that (even though I wish I could) I can't marathon every series that I read. So single books within series will be included within these as well. If I read 2+ books of a series back-to-back, they'll get their own posts. I plan on including 6-7 books per post, so new discussion posts will be up after every 6-7 books I read, give or take a few.  These discussions will be entirely spoiler-free and fairly short.

Also, I try to write these discussions within a day of finishing the book. so even if it's been a few months since I've read a book, the discussions were completed when the book was still fresh in my mind. So here we go!

Murder After Hours
(originally titled The Hollow)
by Agatha Christie

Read: January 4th, 2015

This is one of the books in Agatha Christie's Poirot series, a series centered around a brilliant detective named Hercule Poirot. In this book, a weekend in the country turns into the scene of the murder, and of course, Poirot is on the case.

I read somewhere that Agatha Christie said that her biggest mistake with this book was introducing Poirot into it. And I kinda agree. This had a very different feel for me than other Poirot novels. I almost didn't care about who committed the crime, which was very odd. Typically, with the Poirot novels, I don't really care too much about the characters except Poirot. However, that was exactly the opposite. Often, Poirot's presence or absence wasn't important, and I was more concerned with how the characters would end up once everything was said and done. And while I don't necessarily have a problem with this, it just all makes it not seem like a Poirot novel, which is what I set out to read. I chose to read this Poirot novel because it sounded like it would have a very Clue-esque vibe (dinner party at a mansion, person is murdered, everyone starts blaming everyone) and the book definitely didn't have that at all. Overall, it just didn't read like a Poirot novel, and that was its biggest problem for me.

Overall, I gave Murder After Hours 7 stars out of 10.

Wildflower
by Janine Carbone

Read: February 7th, 2015

*I received a free ARC of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review*

I only had a couple complaints, so I'll talk about all of the positives before touching on those. First off, I really enjoyed the way that the flashbacks were mixed in with the main plot. I thought that it was really intriguing and it kept me guessing as to what had happened in Faith's past. I also really enjoyed Faith as a character. As a college student who spends most of my time in my apartment, there were several aspects of her personality that I really connected with.

I thought that the second half of the book was especially thrilling. I was constantly wondering what was about to happen or when something big would happen, and when crazy stuff did start happening, I couldn't put the book down. In fact, I found myself accidentally skipping entire lines because I was trying to read faster than my brain could actually comprehend, because I was just so curious about what was going to happen. That being said, however, I did think that there were a few predictable aspects. I figured out several things about the stalker long before they were revealed in the book

The only real problems that I had happened within the first 50 pages. I felt like there was a little too much telling vs. showing when it came to describing things. This ended up creating the only other real issue that I had with the book: the beginning of the romance. I thought that the beginning stages of the romance were very rushed. We see the very beginning and then jump forward in time twice in very quick succession. For me, this made the relationship seem slightly hard to believe at the beginning. Although it's made very clear that we have jumped forward a significant amount of time, it's hard to think of it as a serious relationship when they met ~20 pages earlier. I really wish that this portion of the romance was fleshed out a little bit more, because I think it would have added a little bit more to the book. I understand why this was a little rushed through, because all of the important events occur after this, but I think it could have been a little more fleshed out without ruining the pacing.

Overall, I thought that this was a really exciting, fast-paced read. If you're looking for a quick and exciting psychological thriller that's deeper than average, I would definitely recommend Wildflower!

I ended up giving Wildflower 7 stars out of 10.

Ten
by Gretchen McNeil

Read: February 24th, 2015

I had my eye on this one for a while, but didn't have very high hopes for it. Ten is basically a re-telling of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which is my personal favorite stand-alone novel of all time... which is why I didn't have very high hopes for it.

Because I've read And Then There Were None, I did expect some things that I think would have been a surprise to anyone who hadn't read And Then There Were None. And I think that the changes made to the original story were cleverly done. Even though I wasn't surprised by any of the twists, I didn't figure out who the killer was until just a little bit before it was revealed. I was fairly convinced that it was someone else. So I applaud Gretchen McNeil for that.

Now on to the not-so-great. Until the deaths started happening, almost everything was really cringey. I know that a good chunk of it was purposeful to highlight how obnoxious many of the characters are, but there was definitely some dialogue that I thought was completely stupid. It reminded me why I don't usually read books that deal with teens who are actually in high school. I'll read about teenagers all day long, but when they get into a normal high school setting they just tend to get obnoxious. On top of this, the writing overall was just meh. I usually don't tend to notice how good or bad writing is, but I definitely noticed in this book. It wasn't down-right awful, but it definitely wasn't written amazingly. It was also pretty heavy on the foreshadowing. A little more subtlety would have helped tremendously.

Despite the cringey moments, Ten was very fast-paced, and I ended up finishing it in one day because I was just too curious to see what was going to happen. So, I ended up giving Ten 7.5 stars out of 10.

Evil Under The Sun
by Agatha Christie

Read: February 26th, 2015

Once again, this is a part of Agatha Christie's Poirot series. In this book, Hercule Poirot is vacationing on an island. And one morning, one of the guests, a beautiful actress, is found murdered.

I was surprisingly really disappointed in this book. I typically spend the entirety of a Poirot book just sitting and pointing the finger at everyone. I get really invested in trying to figure out who did it. But in this, I found myself just not caring. Sure, I had suspicions and hunches, but none that I particularly cared about or felt adamant about. I dunno, I just had an overwhelming sense of meh with this book. It gets slight bonus points for the fact that the mystery was intricately crafted, but that's usual of Poirot books, so it wasn't as if I wasn't expecting that.

I ended up giving Evil Under The Sun 5.5 stars out of 10. Like I said, that bonus .5 is for the intricacy of the mystery.

The Body Electric
by Beth Revis

Read: March 7th, 2015

Beth Revis has solidified her spot among my favorite authors with The Body Electric. I've talked a bit about how much I appreciate excellent world-building, and how important world-building is to my enjoyment of a book... and Beth Revis gives me pretty much everything I could ever want. The technology is super cool. I feel like this would be a good read for someone wanting to get into sci-fi, because the technology is explained in enough detail to make sense and be interesting, but Revis doesn't bore you with long explanations about how everything works... which wouldn't actually be boring to me, but I was happy with the explanations we got.

Also, it takes place within the same universe as Revis' Across The Universe trilogy. However, since this takes place in the future of the Across The Universe world, and is set on Earth rather than space, that doesn't really have a huge effect on this book because the technology and world are very different from the trilogy. There are, however, a couple Easter eggs that Across The Universe fans will appreciate.

However, there was one aspect that kept gnawing at me and slightly bothered me (not a spoiler-- promise!). So, right from the beginning, the Secessionary War is mentioned. There are a lot of things about the war that are discussed. We see how life is after the war, we learn about some events during the war, but it's never really explained how the war started or what was being fought for. Obviously, "secessionary" speaks for itself, but who was seceding? How did it start? This never got answered, and that really bothered me because it was the only hole in the world-build.

I do feel like the blurb about this slightly misconstrues some of the things in this book, namely the Reveries. The blurb makes it sound like reveries are something only Ella can do because she has special powers, but that's not the case. It's actually a technology that other people can and do use. However, special abilities do make an appearance in this book, so I'm not too bothered by it, because I don't think anyone would be put off by that difference. Just go into it expecting sci-fi/dystopian, not paranormal/dystopian.

Overall, I liked the story. The majority of it was pretty fast-paced, and full of twists and turns. With about 100 pages in, I had been considering it a 9 star book. I was really loving it, and there were definitely some twists and turns that I didn't see coming, but there were a couple things that were unsurprising. However, those last 100 pages... WHOA. So many plot twists. So much craziness. Mind blown. I could not put the book down. It was just utter craziness and I loved it.

I decided to give The Body Electric 9.5 stars out of 10. Not quite perfection, but so amazing.

The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss

I have to admit, it took me a little while to get invested in the story. Right from the start, the writing was beautiful, but I wasn't quite sure what was going on yet, and there hadn't yet been any excitement, so until we got into Kvothe's story, I wasn't incredibly invested. However, once his story began, I was hooked. 

I will warn everyone going into this that it's not exactly a fast-paced book, because it is a story of Kvothe's life, rather than just a small snippet of an exciting part of his life. However, I typically enjoy slower novels more than most people. I appreciate, pay attention to, and care about world building more than the average reader, which is probably why I have such a deep love of high fantasy and dystopian novels. And in this book, we get incredible world building. One of the most interesting aspects of the book for me was learning about the system of magic within this world. It, just like everything else in this world, is really well fleshed out and just so incredibly detailed.

I also really like Kvothe as a character. He's really strong and determined. He knows what he wants, and he'll do whatever he has to in order to reach his goal. Although he does have the character flaw of being somewhat arrogant, that just makes him a bit more endearing to me, because although I don't express it like he does, I definitely have an arrogant streak.

Even though this is a large book, and it did take me a while to read it, and it was a slower book, it never felt like a task. There was a section that was a little slower, but it wasn't a huge section (I'll discuss further in the spoilers) and so it really didn't bother me, especially since the following section was my favorite part of the book.

So, overall, I just absolutely loved this book. I can absolutely understand why it has a 4.5 average on Goodreads. The writing was amazing, as was everything else about this book. 10 stars out of 10. I'm officially obsessed.

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Books I'm Bringing Home Over Break

Hey, y'all! I've seen several booktubers who are in college make videos showing the books that they brought home with them for the holidays, so I decided to do the same.

So, one of the biggest struggles over break is trying to figure out what I can bring home with me. Since I go to school a very, very, long way away from where my parents live, and checking bags is super expensive, I usually just bring a backpack and a small suitcase home with me, so it's always a struggle to try to figure out what clothes and fun things to bring home with me, especially because I know I'll be coming home with more things at the end of the break. So I had to choose the books that I wanted to take home with me very carefully, because even though I have a kindle, I have most of my books only in physical form. Let's get right into it!

Also, as a side note, I'll be listing these in the order that I plan to read them!

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Book 1: The Hunger Games

Book 2: Catching Fire

Book 3: Mockingjay

by Suzanne Collins

I've mentioned this before several times, but I've actually never read The Hunger Games trilogy. Now, before you go freaking out, allow me to explain. I tried to start it for the first time back in my senior year of high school 3 years ago, when it was huge, huge, HUGE because the movie was just about to come out. The first couple chapters didn't hold my attention quite enough, and so I ended up setting it down. And there were several reasons that I never picked it back up. I really wanted to avoid it because of all the hype around it. I didn't want another Twilight moment. I also heard a lot of negative things about the third book from some friends whose opinions I trust. And I ended up seeing the movie (just the first one!) before reading the book, so I knew what happened. And I got spoiled for some of the ending (a certain character's death, as well as the result of the love triangle). So yeah, there are a lot of reasons that I haven't read these books yet. But I know that I'll at least love the first book once I actually read it, so I just need to get on that already.

The Rook

by Daniel O'Malley

I've had this book on my TBR for a few months now. I saw it as a recommendation after reading Ready Player One, and the book summary had me hooked. I absolutely love fantasy and dystopian, and lately, I've been really digging adult fantasy. Ideally, I'll be reading this immediately after The Hunger Games, but I might read The Name of the Wind instead, since I want to read it by the end of the year. It honestly just depends how quickly I finish The Hunger Games trilogy, because I want to be done with at least one of the two before the end of the year.

The Kingkiller Chronicle

Book 1: The Name of the Wind

Book 2: The Wise Man's Fear

by Patrick Rothfuss

Ideally, I'll be done with everything through the end of The Name of the Wind by the end of the year, and The Wise Man's Fear will be my first book of 2015. However, things might get shuffled around. Who knows. But I'm really anxious to read these books. I've heard amazing things about them, and I've been really into adult high fantasy lately and both of these books have 4.5 stars on GoodReads. Seriously, that's just incredibly impressive. I don't even think that Harry Potter can boast stats that consistent. I just want to get in on this amazing series.

Ten

by Gretchen McNeil

I brought this one with me just in case I read everything I have with me and want something to read on the way back to school. I'm not expecting this to be that great, but a really simple murder mystery with no depth just sounds great.

So, those are the books that I brought home with me! If, by some odd chance, I happen to read all of these before the end of break (doubtful, given that the books in The Kingkiller Chronicle are over 700 and over 900 pages respectively), I have my kindle with me, and have a handful of books on there that I can read. 

I've started doing Booktube a little as well, so if you want to check that out, you can click HERE. I plan to post most of my videos to my blog, but just in case I miss one or decide not to post it on here, that will keep you up-to date. 

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The Elusive Perfect 10 Star Rating

I apologize in advance for how rambley this will probably be. This post is as much for working out my own thoughts as it is to get the opinions of other people.

I've always enjoyed rating and ranking things. Whether it be CDs or movies or books, I've always felt the need to have distinct favorites, a distinct list of my top 10, and to rate things (which is in stark contrast to the fact that I'm completely indecisive about everything). This might be why I chose to start a blog where I review things. I like not only expressing my feelings about something, but also giving it a score that defines how good I think that thing is.

However, as I've been reviewing more and more books, I've realized that I seem to be a fairly tough rater. Many of my favorite booktubers have average book ratings somewhere above 4 stars (out of 5). I, however, have an average of 3.38. Of the 113 books I've rated on Goodreads, only 14 books have received a 5 star rating. In comparison, I've given out thirty-nine 4 star ratings and forty-one 3 star ratings.

Am I that unimpressed with the books I read that I've rated the majority of my books as just "average" and have only thought that 14 books deemed receiving five stars? I mean, I only gave three of the Harry Potter books a 5 star rating, and that's my favorite series ever!

I've realized that the large number of 4 star ratings is due to me shirking away from giving a book 5 stars unless I think it truly deserves it. I've read a book, thought that it's good enough to deserve 4.75 stars... and yet still clicked the 4 star rating, simply because I didn't think it deserved the full 5 star rating. That book was closer to being a 5 star than to being a 4 star, and yet I still gave it 4.

Along similar lines, when I go to do the ratings for my CDs On My Shelf posts, I have trouble giving CDs the full 10 stars unless they're one of my all-time, perfect, can't-be-beaten, CDs. So far, I've discussed several CDs that I would consider to be among my favorites... and all but 1 of those favorites has received 9.5 stars rather than 10. And when it came to that single CD that received 10 stars, I knew going into the post that it would get the full 10 stars, because it's my second favorite CD of ALL TIME. The 4 CDs I've discussed which received 9.5 ratings would all fall within my top 20 CDs ever, and possibly in the top 10, and yet they only received 9.5. Why?

I feel like I often hold the books I read (and the music I listen to) to unreachable standards. A couple times, I've found myself thinking that a book wasn't as good as Harry Potter, so there was no way it deserved the full 5 stars. That's a ridiculous standard for me to hold any books to, because I know full well that I'll never love a book or series as much as I love Harry Potter. And yet I use it as a comparison. Is it justified, or is it stupid? I can't decide.

Lately, I've been more lenient with my 5 star ratings, just to try it out. I've been using Goodreads' little descriptors attached to the ratings (5 stars= it was amazing, 4= really liked it, 3= liked it, 2= it was ok, 1= didn't like it) to help me decide what to give it. In the last month, I've given 3 books 5 star ratings- Clockwork Princess, City of Glass, and City of Heavenly Fire. I definitely think that Clockwork Princess deserved every single decimal of the 5 star rating... but I'm not sure about the other two. How can I give all 3 books the same rating, when I could easily rank them from best to worst?

Do I give out less 10 star ratings because I want to save them for those very special books/movies/CDs, or because I'm not as easily impressed as the general public? I'd like to believe that it's both. As creative and artsy as I am, I'm also a thinker. I tend to be really analytical and that tends to lead to being somewhat critical. So I can certainly see that I'm probably a more difficult person to please. However, I do feel like I try to save the "full marks" for books/CDs that are genuinely special- books that I can re-read over and over with the same enjoyment; CDs that I can enjoy all the time, regardless of any outside factors. It's not just a quality rating, but an emotional rating as well- the difference between like and love.

I guess I say all of this to say... I'm stingy with my 10 star ratings, and I think I'm OK with that. If you see that I've given full stars to anything in any medium, you know that it's not just something I thought was good and slapped a rating on. Rather, it's something I think is special and really care about, which is what I think that a full star rating is all about in the first place. Could I be a little more lenient? Sure. Should I just go ahead and give the rest of the Harry Potter series the full stars? Probably. Will I?......... Maybe. I like being able to easily denote my favorites in the series.

So what are your thoughts on this whole thing? Do you (whether you're a reviewer or not) tend to be picky with your ratings? Do you hold off on full-star ratings like I do, or do you tend to hand them out fairly freely? Once again, sorry for it being so rambley- it was practically stream of consciousness writing. I used my filter very sparingly.

Hopefully, either Monday or Tuesday will be my Prisoner of Azkaban Discussion post. That will hopefully be followed closely by my May/June book haul (which is slightly extremely impressive... I have yet to count the books I have bought. and I'm not sure I want to). I also plan on getting a chapter of my Harry Potter fanfic up soon. I would've done one sooner, but I hit a bit of a snag with the plot and have been trying to figure out where to go for this chapter before moving on to some of the most exciting/ my favorite plot points!

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, don't forget to subscribe/follow, since it lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm doing. See y'all in a few days!