From Kristen's Brain...: agatha

Showing posts with label agatha. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Books I Read In One Sitting [Top 5 Wednesday]

Hey, y'all! So for Top 5 Wednesday this week, the topic was books you read in one sitting (or close to). I had so many books that I wanted to mention that I decided to do a blog post just listing (and briefly discussing) all of the books that I could think of that I'd read in one sitting or close to one sitting.

So, since the list is so long, let's just go ahead and jump into it!

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

by J.K. Rowling

This is still the only book that I've ever been able to get at its midnight release, and I dove into it as soon as possible. I probably had to set it down a few times to do chores and such, but I pretty much read it in a single sitting.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

by J.K. Rowling

I've mentioned this several times, but I was on vacation when this book came out and instead of waiting until I got home to get the copy I reserved, I bought this at the airport and spent the entire day on the plane reading it and once again finished it in a day.

City of Bones

by Cassandra Clare

This book was my introduction to the Shadowhunter world, and I was hooked right from the start. I remember discovering it and being completely unable to put it down. And ever since, I've loved Cassie Clare and her books.

City of Heavenly Fire

by Cassandra Clare

I read this Cassie Clare novel really quickly for a very different reason. Last May, I was doing a reading challenge where I read all of Clare's books in one month. This was the last book I had to read for the challenge, and I had only one day left to read it, so I buckled down and read the entire thing in a single day.

Clockwork Princess

by Cassandra Clare

Similar to the last one, I was reading this for my challenge, and I was getting a little behind, so I really wanted to get it done quickly. However, that quickly changed when I got so pulled into the book that I couldn't put it down, and I fell in love with it.

13 Reasons Why

by Jay Asher

This is one of my all-time favorite books, and the first time I read it, I was so drawn in that I read it all in a single sitting. I just wanted to find out everything about the story, and couldn't put it down.

Divergent

by Veronica Roth

For this one, I read about 50 pages before going to sleep. When I picked it up the next day, I got pulled in and couldn't put it down. Like with Clockwork Princess, I got so invested in the story, I just had to keep reading and reading.

The Shadow Throne

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

With this one, I'd been reading the trilogy for a while and just really wanted to figure out how it ended, and so I buckled down and read the whole thing in one sitting.

And Then There Were None

by Agatha Christie

I've obviously read this one in a single sitting multiple times, but I'm pretty sure that the first time I read it, I also either read it in one or two sittings. It's just too good.

The Future of Us

by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Like with Jay Asher's other book, 13 Reasons Why, this book had a really intriguing concept and I eagerly anticipated its release. When it finally came out, I bought it and was so intrigued that I just sat down and read the whole thing. Although the book didn't live up to my expectations, it was at least good enough to keep me interested until the end.

Ten

by Gretchen McNeil

This quick read was actually due more to a time constraint than to actual interest, even though I was curious about what was going to happen. I read this in the month where I had to read 6 books, and I was getting down to the end and just needed to fly through books, so I just sat down and got through this one in a couple hours.

Wildflower

by Janine Carbone

Just like with Ten, I read this in February where I had to read 6 books in a month. Plus, this book is really short and fast-paced, so I probably would have read it in a single sitting either way.

Evil Under The Sun

by Agatha Christie

This is another February, 6-books-in-a-month book. But this one was the last one of the month, so I was under even more of a time crunch. I definitely wouldn't have gotten through it as quickly without the time constraint though, because this is (so far) my least favorite book that I've read this year.

Horrorstor

by Grady Hendrix

I read this in October as a horror marathon, and was so intrigued by the concept and the very interesting and unique format of the book that I just wanted to see what would happen. It wasn't an amazing book by any stretch of the imagination, but it was intriguing enough that I finished it in one sitting.

Ignite Me

by Tahereh Mafi

This was another reading challenge one. Otherwise, I don't think that I would've read it in a single sitting like I did. Definitely the best book in the Shatter Me trilogy by far, but still not anywhere near being one of my favorite books.

The Body Electric

by Beth Revis

This book was just so good. I couldn't put it down. The world was so cool and the story was so intriguing, and I just kept reading and reading.

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

I was actually on a trip when I read this. It's a pretty short book, so it wasn't hard to finish it in a single sitting. And after this one, I actually continued right on to...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

...this one! Which I also read during that same sitting. Probably not the best idea to read both of these books in the same day, but oh well. They were both really good.

Whodunnit? Murder on Mystery Island

by Anthony E. Zuiker

Murder mysteries are really quick reads for me because I just want to know what's going to happen. And these books are particularly quick reads because of the way that the murder investigations are conducted, so I just flew through this.

The Twilight Saga (except Breaking Dawn)

by Stephenie Meyer

Yep, I read the first three books in the Twilight Saga in about 6 days. Two sittings per book, even though they're massive. I almost want to go back and reread them just to see if I actually enjoy them now. Breaking Dawn, however, took me a really long time to read because I hated Jacob's POV (even though he was one of my favorite characters in the series).

So, those are all of the books that I can think of that I read in (pretty much) one sitting! Let me know down in the comments what books y'all have read in one sitting!

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Thursday, April 30, 2015

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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Monday, December 29, 2014

Book Discussions #2

Hey, y'all! Back in June, I did a post where I did short discussions about some stand-alone books that I'd read recently and said that I might make it a series... and that's what I've decided to do! In these posts, I'm going to be doing 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, all but one of these were written within a day of finishing the book. so even though it's been a few months since I've read many of these, the discussions were completed when the book was still fresh in my mind. I was waiting for one more book before posting this, but I decided I'd rather get it up before the end of the year instead of waiting for one more book. So here we go!

Looking For Alaska
by John Green

So, I actually read this all the way back at the beginning of March and forgot to add it in my first Stand-Alone Discussion's post. Oops! But I had a lot of opinions about this book, so I just had to talk about it. I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but... I wasn't impressed. I didn't like it. First off, I didn't like the characters. I couldn't empathize with them because I didn't care about them. Maybe it's because I'm a boring adult, but I found their constant drinking/smoking/rule-breaking to just be stupid, immature high school students trying to be cool and just wasn't impressed. I kinda-ish ended up liking The Colonel, but don't even get me started on Pudge. If you want to know why, ask and I'll explain why I don't like Pudge, but it's a long explanation so I won't discuss it right now. I also felt like John Green wanted to make Alaska this very deep-thinking philosophical character, but she came off as someone trying too hard to pose as a philosophical person. Like she was trying to be the stereotype. Another problem that I had was that nothing about this book kept me guessing or surprised me. I saw the twists coming. All of them. To me, that's a sign of a plot that is way too predictable. Overall, I just didn't like it. Sorry, not sorry.

I gave it 2/5 stars on GoodReads, so I'll give it 4 stars out of 10. Please don't hurt me.

And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie

This was not a first-time read for me. If I'm being realistic, it's closer to the 10th-15th read. If you saw my Top 15 Stand-Alones post (Check it out here) then you'll know that this is my all-time favorite stand-alone novel. After all of those challenges and after that huge reading marathon, I just wanted to curl up with my favorite book. So that's exactly what I did. It was a great choice. I read it in just a few hours and really enjoyed reading it again. It was very comfortable and familiar. And great. Philip Lombard will forever be one of my favorite literary characters. It's just a very well concocted mystery and I just love it.

It's my favorite book! How could I give it anything but 10 stars out of 10?!

Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline

I knew going into this that I was going to enjoy it. Although I didn't grow up in the 80s and I'm not an expert on the decade, I do have a pretty high interest in the decade. Most of my favorite movies are from that decade, and I really enjoy a lot of the rock music from the 80s. Even more importantly, I love dystopians, and I love video games. If you've read anything where I've talked about dystopian novels, you know that when I read a dystopian, I want world building out the wazoo. This book has all the world building I could ever hope for. It made my little curious heart sing. But it didn't suffer because of it. It was still extremely action-packed and really awesome. A lot of the video game references went over my head, since I'm not well-versed in older video games, but the book did a great job explaining things. Honestly, this book just had everything I could want from a book: action, adventure, magic, a fantastic world, a fantastic plot, mystery, etc. it was just all great.

Overall, I had to give it 10 stars out of 10.

Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan

I'm not quite sure what I expected going into this book, but it wasn't really... this. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book! But it took a really weird turn that I totally wasn't expecting. I knew that there was something weird and mysterious going on with the bookstore based on the synopsis, but I was thinking that it would be something illegal or something like that. Either way, I didn't love this book, but I did like it. There were several things that I thought could have been explained better. There were a few parts where I found myself having to try a little too hard to understand what was going on, because something hadn't been explained enough. Aside from that though, this book was pretty enjoyable. Overall, it was likable but unimpressive.

I decided to give it 7 stars out of 10.

Fangirl
by Rainbow Rowell

I went into this book not knowing a ton about the plot or characters... except the main character. When I heard that the main character was an introverted girl who wrote fanfiction and was going to college for the first time, I knew I had to read it because that was me 2 years ago. I feel like a large percentage of young adult readers will be able to relate to Cath. I know I definitely did. This book was completely adorable. I laughed out loud and said "Aww" more times than I could count. It was so cute. It was realistic and believable, and even had some deep moments. But overall, this is light contemporary at its finest, and I loved it.

I think I'm going to go with 9.75 stars out of 10. Almost perfect.

The Bone Season

by Samantha Shannon

Y'all. Y'ALL. So, I had high expectations for this book. It's the first in a new series, it's a fantasy and dystopian mix, it's got a main character who's close to my age, it's set in England... the list goes on and on. The point is, this book had absolutely everything I love in books... and it did not disappoint. The main gist is that our main character, Paige, is clairvoyant. In this dystopian future, being clairvoyant is a crime and clairvoyants are hunted down and killed. There are many many many different types of clairvoyants, and Paige is one of the rarest. She works for a voyant (slang for clairvoyant) gang in London. A lot of people weren't huge fans of this book because they didn't like the info-dumps and they found it hard to keep up with the different types of voyants. But I loved all of that. When I'm introduced to a new form of 'magic' or a new world or a dystopian version of my own world, I want to learn all of the information. And I definitely got that. And loved every second.

Since it is the first book of a series, there is a lot of world-building and character development, and I really enjoyed it. Another of the key characters, Warden, is especially interesting. I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers, but if you've read the book, you know what I mean. I did find it a bit difficult to keep up with the characters, because nearly all of them have 2 names, and they're used interchangeably, and sometimes it's hard to keep up with which 2 names refer to the same person. But honestly, that's the only criticism that I have about the book. I loved all of it. It was incredible. The Mime Order comes out in late January and I really just don't want to wait two whole months for that book. NOW. NOW. Please, NOW.

This is an easy 10 stars out of 10. This was amazing.

So that's it for the last Book Discussions post of the year! I hope you enjoyed this! Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments!

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Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Bookshelf Tour: Home Edition!

Hey y'all! So, last month I did a bookshelf tour and promised that two more bookshelf tours would follow pretty closely behind it. Well, we have reached the first of those two! Last week, I was able to take a week off of work and go home. Well... not really home, but to where my parents live. They moved after I graduated high school. But anyway, I digress. While I was at "home," I was able to go through my bookshelves and re-organize them and clean out some stuff. So, I took some pictures of the shelves, and it's now time for my Bookshelf Tour: Home Edition!

This time, it'll be in just one single part. I'll go shelf by shelf and give an overview of its organization and then go book by book saying whether or not I've read it/ how many times I've read it.

If you'd like, you can also check out my last bookshelf tour by clicking here for part 1 (overview and organization) or here for part 2 (specifics and read/unread).

So, as you can see, I have everything divided by the six cubes. The top two cubes are double-stacked, as is the bottom right cube. The other three cubes are just single stacked.

So, a quick chat about the stuff on top of my bookshelf. On the far left, you'll see a stack of books. Those are all of my yearbooks, K-12. They're mostly in order, but my freshman yearbook is massive so it can't really fit anywhere but the bottom of the stack.

Beside those, you'll see a collar with a card on top. When I was 6, my family adopted a puppy named Sean, and we had him for 12 years before we had to put him down. The pet hospital sent us a card and so I put it on display with Sean's collar.

Whatta cutie!

Beside that, you'll see a little person. That is my Dwight K. Schrute bobble-head ornament. He says various things. I can't remember all of them, but I know one is from the season 3 ep. when he's job hunting and naming words that describe him. In case I haven't mentioned this, I'm a huge fan of The Office. I've seen every single episode, most of them multiple times.

Lastly, we have the piggy bank. That's from my graduation party. My friends got that for people to put my graduation gifts in, and I decided to keep it because it was pretty cute.

OK, on to the shelves!

This shelf is divided into 3 sections. The first and most obvious one is my Harry Potter paperback collection. These are the first copies of the books that I own, and as you can see, they have been well-loved and read many times over. The second section consists of my Harry Potter accompanying literature. This is mostly comprised of analyses of the series. Finally, I have some list books.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone- Read (5ish times)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets- Read (5ish times)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban- Read (5-7 times)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire- Read (3-5 times)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix- Read (3-5 times)

What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7- Read

Muggles and Magic- unread

Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter (Books 1-4) - Read

Vs.: A Journal of Choices- unfinished

Music Journal (by Moleskine)- unfinished

Music Listography- unfinished

My Listography- unfinished

On the next shelf over, we have some of my favorite series. If you have seen my first bookshelf tour, you'll know that the other two books in the Mortal Instruments series are at school with me, and that I have the entire Pendragon series at school with me in hardcover.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare- Read (3 times)

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare- Read (twice)

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare- Read (twice)

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare- Read

The Merchant of Death by DJ MacHale- Read (3/4 times)

The Lost City of Faar by DJ MacHale- Read (twice)

The Never War by DJ MacHale- Read (twice)

The Reality Bug by DJ MacHale- Read (twice)

Black Water by DJ MacHale- Read (twice)

The Rivers of Zadaa by DJ MacHale- Read (twice)

Moving down to the next row, we have my shelf that I have labelled the "paranormal romance" shelf. Although I'm not quite sure if The Host is a romance but since it's Stephanie Meyer, I'll just assume it is.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer- Read (5ish times)

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer- Read 2-4 times)

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer- Read (2-4 times)

Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer- Read (5ish times)

The Host by Stephanie Meyer- unread

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick- unread

Beastly by Alex Finn- unread

Beside the paranormal romance shelf, we have my shelf of assorted YA books and nostalgia books... AKA books from my childhood.

The Muder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty- Read

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler- Read (twice)

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell- unread

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan- unread

The Boys Next Door by Jennifer Echols- Read (2/3 times)

The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey- Read (several times)

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald- Read (several times)

The Magic Tree House #8: Midnight on the Moon by Mary Pope Osbourne- Read (several times)

A to Z Mysteries #1: The Absent Author by Ron Roy- Read (several times)

A to Z Mysteries #8: The Haunted Hotel by Ron Roy- Read (several times)

A to Z Mysteries #13: The Missing Mummy by Ron Roy- Read (several times)

A to Z Mysteries #18: The Runaway Racehorse by Ron Roy- Read (several times)

The House on Hackman's Hill by Joan Lowery Nixon- Read (several times)

Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix- Read (twice)

All-American Girl by Meg Cabot- Read (10-12 times)

Rob&Sara.com by PJ Petersen and Ivy Ruckman- Read

Midnight For Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo- Read (2/3 times)

Banner in the Sky by James Ramsey Ullman- Read (2/3 times)

Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry- Read

We're now on the last row, which as you can probably tell, is where I keep my Agatha Christie collection. All of these books, except the two on top, are from her Poirot series, the only series of hers that I've read from so far. And of course, I've read And Then There Were None, but I won't go into another discussion about that beautiful novel. And I have a duplicate copy of one of these because no one warned me about title changes, and I thought they were different books. Also, I thought these were in order, but I have discovered a couple are out of order and it's bothering me greatly. I'm honestly tempted to call my mom and ask her to fix it. But I won't, because it's currently 1 AM.

Murder on the Links- Read

Lord Edgware Dies- unread

The Big Four- Read

Murder on the Orient Express- Read (twice)

Three Act Tragedy- Read

The ABC Murders- Read

Cards on the Table- Read

Appointment With Death- unread

Murder After Hours- unread

Mrs. McGinty's Dead- unread

After The Funeral- Read

Funerals are Fatal- Read (this is a duplicate of the book above)

Hickory Dickory Death- unread

Cat Among the Pigeons- unread

Third Girl- unread

Elephants Can Remember- unread

Curtain- unread

Death Comes As The End- unread

Crooked House- unread

Finally, the last shelf is the most random. These are mostly non-fiction and adult novels... plus Eragon. The first four are books I used in one of my required freshman classes in college, and I don't even know why I still have them. Either way, I'm not going to discuss them, partially because they're unimportant, and partially because I don't really know what they're called and can't read their spines.

Dictionary of Dreams

Writing for Children & Teenagers- unread

Writing Fiction and Nonfiction- Read- Read

The Birth Order Book by Kevin Leman- unread

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson- unread

Eragon by Christopher Paolini- unread

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald- Read

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare- Read

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card- Read

The Shining by Stephen King- unread

These books are on the same shelf as those in the section above, but these are behind them. These books are the ones I plan on getting rid of in the near future. Rather than go through all of them, I'll just let you know that the only ones I've read are the two on the right (Midnighters Books 1&3). Some of these books are ones that I know I'm probably never going to pick up (Cirque Du Freak, Found, Ten Great Mysteries, Book of Shadows, The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, Everything's Eventual, and Shutter Island). Then there's All The Pretty Horses, which I was supposed to read for school, but I hated it and only read a little. Finally, the last few books (Maximum Ride and the Midnighters books) are ones that I want in different editions. Because I hate mass-market paperback.

These books all sit on the shelf behind the Harry Potter books. Almost all of these, except the "simple diary" on the right, are quiz books. I'll save you the bore of going through all of them one by one. Just know that I've looked through these and taken the quizzes many, many times.

And finally, the last shelf. These books sit behind the "favorite series" books. As you can see, I have a lot of journals. And this isn't even all of them. Most of these have very little in them. The only one that's actually full is the pink one laying on top of the other books. It's one that I filled up when I was really young, and it's full of little short stories. I'm really glad that my writing has matured since then. It's tragic. Maybe I'll share one of the stories with y'all. I'm not sure if that would be a "so bad it's funny" scenario or a "terrible, cringe-worthy, oh-no-look-away" scenario.

So there you go, those are the books on my bookshelf at home! As promised, I will have a bookshelf tour for my apartment bookshelf coming out... sometime. Probably in September. I've got a lot of stuff in the plans for the rest of the month, so probably not 'til September.

I've also created a Facebook page for my blog, so if you want to check that out and like it, you can click HERE. I'll try to keep that pretty up-to-date with new posts and such.

Thanks for reading this! 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 soon!

From Kristen's Brain...

Pages

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Top 10 Most Read Authors

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Books I Read In One Sitting [Top 5 Wednesday]

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Book Discussions #3

Monday, December 29, 2014

Book Discussions #2

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Bookshelf Tour: Home Edition!