This is probably going to be pretty rambly, so... prepare yourselves? IDK. Work with me here. Anyway, I tend to make beginning of the year bookish resolutions, but this year I decided to make goals across the board. I plan to make a video sharing these as well, but I wanted to do a blog post explaining first, since I can't film for about another week.
So, a bit of explanation here: One major struggle that I've had this year is that I've accumulated a huge pile of hobbies and interests and things I want to do, and it's gotten big enough that I'm finding it difficult to split my focus on a regular basis. I'm finding myself working on one or two at a time, letting the others fall by the wayside, and I hate doing that. So, I wanted to make some year-long goals that I can work toward. Instead of making tons and tons, I've decided to make a single goal for each hobby. Something to reach for that is attainable, but still a little challenging. That way, I'm not pushing myself too hard in any one hobby.
Without any further ado, let's jump into the list.
READING
I figured this was the best one to start with, given that it's the hobby where I give myself yearly goals every year. Usually, I give myself a challenge to read 50 books and to read 7 books with 500+ pages. And I'm not giving myself either of those this year, even though they're in the back of my mind because I do legitimately want to accomplish those this year. Instead, I've given myself a single goal to work toward year-long.
GET MY TBR DOWN TO 30% OF MY LIBRARY
My 2016 goal was to get my TBR down from 45ish% to 35%, and I accomplished that. My goal for 2017 was to get it from 35% to 30%. And now, at the beginning of 2018, it's sitting at.... 39%. Yeah, I kinda screwed that up. BUT I believe in myself, and given that it's my singular reading goal for 2018, I think I've got this.
I'm also doing a challenge based off of booksandlala's closet unhaul series, where I watch old hauls and have to read the books from them that are still on my TBR shelf. Technically, that's not a "goal" for the year, because either I read the books or I don't-- either way, books are probably getting unhauled. BUT, it does help me to accomplish this goal. So, win win. The first video in that series is embedded below!
YOUTUBE
One major change in 2017 is that I've started a second YouTube channel! My obsession with KPop that developed throughout the year led to the creation of a KPop-centric YouTube channel and many, many KPop videos. One of which got 100K+ views. Which is mind-blowing. My goal for the year is a pretty simple one..
MAKE 100 VIDEOS
Yes, that's 2 videos a week. Approximately. Which sounds like a lot, and it is. But I love making videos, and that's only 1 video a week for each channel, and I've been doing 2 per channel for the past couple weeks with very little difficulty. This challenge allows me to split it up however I want, so if I'm at a point where I'm working on a particularly time-intensive KPop video, I could easily make up for that by having 2 bookish video in a week, which isn't difficult at all. Really, all this challenge forces me to do is to be consistent with each of the channels, since I'll probably get burnt out if I make 100 bookish videos or 100 KPop videos.
WRITING
At the beginning of 2017, I was sitting on a freshly-written 96K word first draft of Flirting With Fame, my NaNo project. I worked on character development and outlining sporadically throughout the year, and then in October, I started a new fanfic project, which I worked on during NaNo. And then, right at the end of the year, I finished character development and outlining and prepared to start a second draft of Flirting With Fame. So... two projects. Both of which I like. Only one goal makes sense...
FINISH A FULL DRAFT OF EITHER FLIRTING WITH FAME OR MY FANFIC
Across the board, I really just want to finish A draft this year, regardless of the project, but I've decided that I want to restrict it to these two projects because I really shouldn't jump into another one until I've finished a draft of each. In reality, I would like to finish a draft of both of these, since I really love both of them, but I'm not going to give myself that huge of a challenge for the year. So, one draft. Of one of them. I think I'm going to begin with Flirting With Fame, but IDK for sure. I've been working on it, but not consistently. So, we'll see where that goes. I might need to set up some sort of writing schedule for myself but IDK for sure.
KOREAN
Another new thing that happened this year is that I started learning Korean. TL;DR: I've been wanting to learn a second language for a long time, and I was working on Spanish because I took Spanish in high school and college and was pretty good at it. But, when I started getting into KPop, I switched to Korean instead and have been learning Korean on and off since May. Given that it's a language, it's hard to have a definitive goal, but the one I've decided on is...
BE ABLE TO HOLD A BASIC CONVERSATION/ READ BASIC POSTS
I feel like I've simultaneously learned a lot and almost nothing at all with my Korean learning. It's incredibly frustrating. That said, I am able to understand some very basic phrases that I see popping up on posts, which I always love. But, I want to improve upon this. I'm less concerned about the conversing than with reading. Long-run, obviously I'd like to be fluent enough to be able to both speak and read the language, but obviously reading is going to be the easier one because conjugating is possibly the hardest thing about speaking a language. Anyway, my goal obviously isn't to be fluent by the end of the year, but I want to have a basic reading knowledge of the language by the end of the year. Maybe not to understand all of the conjugations or to be able to speak fluently, but I want to be able to understand enough that I don't have to tap the translate button on all of the things my favorite idols post.
MAIN BLOG
It's hard for me to come up with a goal for my blog, since I mostly just post whatever I want on here, but I decided to give myself a pretty simple one...
DO A LARGE-SCALE RANKING
A couple years ago, I did a ranking of all of the designers who'd ever been on Project Runway. It was a huge series, and it took forever. And I loved doing it. And I want to do another one. I mentioned this several times throughout 2017, but have yet to do one, so I think I need to finally do it in 2018. I've been planning on ranking my favorite RuPaul's Drag Race queens for at least a year at this point, so I think that once we get season 10, I'm going to do that. But IDK. I gotta do some sort of a big ranking.
SPECIALIS REVELIO
This is my Harry Potter analysis blog, linked at the top of this blog, where I analyze the series chapter by chapter. I started it in 2016 and have been severely, severely slacking on it, and I want to get back to working on it. I don't want it to be my priority throughout the year, but I do want to work on it. So, I'm giving myself a pretty simple goal...
FINISH ANALYZING SORCERER'S STONE
I honestly don't remember how many chapters I've analyzed and how many I have left, but I think that if I do one per month, I can finish by the end of the year. So this isn't a big challenge that I'm giving myself. I just want to work on this blog in some form or fashion and not totally neglect it.
And, I think for now... that's it. 6 hobbies. 6 goals. Hopefully all of them are achievable. There are other things I want to do throughout the year that I'm not making as specific goals (some TV shows/movies I want to watch, some other reading goals, etc), but these are the only firmly in-place goals. They seem pretty manageable, so here's to hoping that I can complete all 6 of them in 2018.
Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See you soon!
I remember being pulled to blogging several years before actually beginning to blog. As someone who's always had the desire to be a writer and even briefly considered doing journalistic writing, there's always been something incredibly appealing about being able to curate my own space on the internet full of my own writings and musings in whichever form I want. Finally, in 2012, I went for it. I started this blog and started posting about Project Runway. I used it pretty casually throughout the end of high school all the way through the end of my freshman year of college.
And then, in the summer of 2013, I got serious. Without getting into too much detail, I lived with my parents over the summer in the small town they'd recently moved to, and I wasn't enjoying it. I didn't know anyone, I had a job in customer service that was kinda miserable, and also felt like I was regressing from "independent adult at college" to "kid at home with parents." Definitely not the best of times. And I found myself throwing basically all of my free time into blogging. I did a lot of fun 30 Day Challenges and CDs On My Shelf posts, and one of my rant-y posts about a scam company actually went semi-viral. Even today, when you search the company, it's near the top of the search results.
I kept this up for quite a while, posting as frequently as possible, and trying to get into a routine. And then, right at the end of 2013, I discovered BookTube. I've always been a huge reader, but in college, I hadn't really been making much time to leisure reading... but BookTube re-sparked that interest. It led to my blog taking a very book-heavy turn. I was essentially doing BookTube-esque videos, but in blog form. Wrap ups, book hauls, reading challenges, etc. But by mid- 2014, that wasn't quite enough for me anymore. I wanted to make BookTube videos. I wanted to reach a wider audience and talk about books with more people. I wanted to actually have a comment section and to interact with people about books instead of seeing a decent view count with zero comments.
So, I started a BookTube channel. I posted a couple videos in the summer of 2014, and then began posting regularly at the end of 2014. And that's been my main focus ever since. Video was never my primary desired form of communication-- it's so much easier to say exactly what you mean when you can type and edit-- but I've enjoyed vlogging for the 2.5 years I've been doing it. I don't have a huge audience, but most of my videos get comments, and I do actually get to interact with people and get feedback. And as that's been going on, I've been less and less devoted to this blog.
Obviously, it hasn't been inactive. At least, not completely. Most of the time, I still post once or twice a month, but my post count has continually gone down over the past 2.5 years, and especially since the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year. I think I posted a grand total of 12 blogs throughout the school year. And the main reason for that... is my vlogging preference.
What I mean by this is that, since I reach a wider audience on YouTube and I get to interact with people more often on there, whenever I get a good idea for a topic to talk about, it almost always gets put on the "vlog" list rather than the "blog" list. I always think "no, this is a topic I want to talk to people about, and that'll work better on my YouTube," and end up putting almost every idea down in the "vlog" column, delegating only my obscure TV show rankings to my blog. Because apparently, everything else is "too good" for my blog. I've had so many ideas that would probably be communicated better in blog form that I've posted on YouTube instead simply because I can converse with more people about it and reach a wider audience on there. That's obviously not an invalid reason, but I hate that I've turned this blog into something deserving of only my most niche, obscure interests and nothing else.
So, what's my point? My point is that you should prepare yourself for more diverse content. I'm hoping to do 30 Day Challenges again, and to post some discussions and just general updates. Maybe even favorites posts. And definitely some book reviews once I get around to it. I'm still definitely going to be doing my niche rankings posts because I freakin' love them, but I want to do more interesting stuff on here, and I want it to be more than just the spill-over from my YouTube. I want it to contain lots of different, diverse things. After all, it IS supposed to be the diverse and random thoughts in my brain.
Also, I say this at the end of every post, but please, make sure to comment on stuff! One of the most motivating things ever is seeing someone interacting with something I've posted. I love fangirling over my favorite topics, so feel free to join me.
That's about all I wanted to say in this post. The summertime is always when I have the most spare time, so I always feel really inspired and motivated to get creative and write/blog/vlog a lot, so I hope to be really active on here over the next three months (and the future too, but grad school is hard, y'all)!
Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! And don't forget to join in the discussion in the comments!
It's that time of year again-- the time when I rank every single book that I read in 2016. I'll try not to ramble too much at the top since this is already going to be a pretty long post, but here's what you need to know:
-- Every book that I read in 2016 is ranked separately. Series are split up into individual books rather than being ranked together in a single spot.
-- Pretty much anything that can be linked is linked. If I wrote more than a sentence or two about it on Goodreads, my written review is linked. If I talked about it in a video, the video is linked. If I did a full book/series review, it's definitely linked. All of the things are linked.
-- Finally, I also have a video where I ranked the top 12 books of 2016. In that video, series are ranked in a single slot, and stuff is shifted around accordingly.
Now that that's out of the way, let's jump into the list.
I feel like there isn't very much left to say about this book that I haven't already said in text or in video form. I re-read my blog post on the book and it made me laugh all over again, so I'd definitely suggest to check out that post and the video as well. But very quickly, I thought that the writing and world build were very weak. The characters are annoying. The society is set in some very arbitrary gender norms and sexism that drove me crazy. That being said, it was really fun to read and make fun of, which saved it from being absolutely awful.
I was just really underwhelmed by this. It's about a group of people trying to steal a ghost from a haunted house, which sounds like a really cool premise. But this was honestly just a bit... blah. Nothing stood out as very interesting or unique, and I didn't connect to anything in this story at all. Overall, this first volume didn't impress me and I won't be continuing on with this series.
I had high hopes for this book. It's a dystopian story told through five novellas that take place throughout time. It's meant to be a bit of a puzzle for the reader to put together-- a mystery for the reader to solve-- but it just wasn't impressive. I thought that it was rather straightforward, and the ultimate reveal left me very underwhelmed.
In Real Life suffered from being a quick read. It tried to deal with some deeper subject matter, but because of the fact that it was a quick read, everything ended up being very surface level and therefore felt very cliche. There was an attempt to make something very moving, but it was very underwhelming.
I already said quite a bit about The Selection, and nearly all of that criticism translates over to The Elite. The one thing that makes this one better than book one is that the inherent gender norms & sexism are much less prominent. Everything else about it was still pretty sloppy, but it became a more entertaining read to laugh at/make fun of without the sexism.
This is one of the few non-fiction books that I read this year, and I guess it doesn't have much of a fair chance, because I had to read this for the research assistant position that I held. It was a perfectly fine read, and in terms of non-fiction, books, it certainly wasn't boring. However, it's a novel about the power of introverts in a talkative world, and I felt that (as an introvert) it didn't necessarily give me any insights that I wasn't already aware of.
This one needs a brief explanation. The Mole is one of my favorite TV shows ever. EVER. Like... top 2 status. Possibly #1. Anyway, it's a reality show and the premise is that there is a group of contestants who compete in challenges to win money for the group pot, which one of them will eventually win. However, among this group of contestants, one is "The Mole," a person placed there by production who is there to sabotage the games. The contestants' goal is to discover who among them is The Mole. That's the quick synopsis, but it's an absolutely brilliant show and it's available on YouTube, so I highly recommend checking it out.
OK, so now on to the book. The book was written by the person who was The Mole in season 2. The book cover has the author's name and image on it. Since I'm such a big fan, I really don't want to spoil the identity of the mole for anyone, so I'm leaving out the cover. The book talks about the mole's experiences on the show. And I thought it was pretty good. For Mole fans, I think it's a must-read. It gives really awesome insight into some behind the scenes stuff. However, there are some sections dealing with "The Mole's" past that were just boring and unnecessary. On top of that, the book reeeeeally needed editing, as I literally began keeping track of how often the word "inasmuch" was used because it was waywayway overused. Because of that, I couldn't really give it a high rating.
51) Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Overall, I thought the Scott Pilgrim series was pretty good, but this was my least favorite volume. There were sections that were pretty nonsensical (which is impressive, given how nonsensical this series is overall). The plot seemed a bit messy in this one, and there were sections that were a bit hard to follow. It was still enjoyable and fun, but definitely lower quality-wise than the rest of the volumes.
50) Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe
This was another shakier volume in the series. It was alright, and it was easier to follow than volume 2, but this one felt a bit forgettable to me. I didn't enjoy it as much as other volumes. And, although the volume was about the same length as the other volumes, it seemed like not quite as much happened in this one. Overall, it was alright, but not as strong as other volumes.
So far, this has been my least favorite volume in the Monster series. The series has hovered a bit above this rating, so it's not much below the others, but I felt like not a lot happened in this volume. I still enjoyed it, just not as much as the ones before it.
Agatha Christie's novels usually fall somewhere in this area, but this one is on the lower end. This was my first Miss Marple mystery, and I found her to be a less compelling sleuth than Hercule Poirot. In fact, I didn't think she was incredibly present in the story. As always with Christie's books, there were interesting twists and turns along the way, but it wasn't as compelling as other books I've read by her.
My one complaint about this volume is that it felt like a diversion from the main plot. The previous volume was my favorite in the series so far, and this one didn't live up to the setup provided by volume 3.
I love The Infernal Devices. I believe that I gave the original novel either 8/10 or 8.5/10, so clearly this one was not as good as the novel. I think that overall, this series is a good adaptation of the original novels, but it's obviously difficult to portray all of the intricacies of a novel in a manga form. And occasionally, the art made it a bit difficult to tell the characters apart.
TL;DR: The manga adaptation is good, but if you're wanting to check out The Infernal Devices, read the original series because you'll get a lot more out of it.
I've enjoyed the first couple volumes of this series. The first was still better, but the characters are enjoyable, and it's definitely a fun and light-hearted series. Definitely not my favorite series ever, but enjoyable.
44) Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together
Not gonna lie, it's been a long time since I read this series, and I read volumes 3-6 in one fell swoop so they all run together a bit. All I can say is that it was enjoyable and that it was a solid installment in the series. Not amazing, but enjoyable.
I have more conflicted opinions about this book than I do about almost any other book ever. I think that this just really, really, really, wasn't my thing. There was nothing wrong with it, and I certainly didn't think that it was bad in any way. I just felt absolutely nothing toward this. Quality-wise, it was perfectly solid. Therefore, I gave it just under 4/5 because it was very clearly a good book, so I couldn't bash it or anything, but I just didn't personally like it or connect with it.
I enjoyed this first volume in the Chew series. It introduced a very intriguing world and enjoyable characters. I enjoyed it, but I haven't continued the series despite the fact that I read this volume almost a year ago. It was good, but it didn't completely grab me and compel me to want to pick up more. I'm still undecided on whether or not to continue this series.
I feel like I already said everything that I wanted to say about this series when talking about volume 2. It's a fun, lighthearted series with interesting characters. I think at this point that I'm not going to continue the series because it wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be, but I think other people will really enjoy it.
40) The Iron Trial
(Magisterium #1) by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
I found this to be an enjoyable read, but I found it very hard to disconnect this from Harry Potter comparisons. I found that there were many similarities to Harry Potter, and I found that hard to shake. That being said, I did like this book, and it did introduce a world that was rather different than the Harry Potter world, and that was probably the most interesting aspect of the book. That being said, it didn't totally grab me and I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I'm going to continue the series.
I'd often heard that this was the best of Christie's Poirot novels, but I think this book really suffered from the fact that it's been 90 years since this book was published. I figured out what was going on rather quickly, for a few reasons: 1) I'm familiar with the way that Christie writes, so I noticed a deviation rather quickly. & 2) In the 90 years since this book was published, other books have borrowed from it. Because of this, despite the fact that this book inspired those other books, this felt less fresh because I'd already seen certain things done before. However, this was still a really great book and I really wish I hadn't figured out what was going on so quickly.
I kinda picked this up out of the blue. It was nearing Halloween and I was in the mood for some creepy books, and this was one that caught my eye. Overall, I thought it was really intriguing and it kept me interested and trying to figure it out throughout the entirety of the book. It also subverted my expectations quite a bit, because I went in expecting a haunted house story and got quite a bit more than that.
37) Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
Like I said, these middle volumes run together a bit, but I do remember enjoying this specific book quite a bit. It added a bit of interest and intrigue to the story that wasn't present in the previous volume, and some of the more interesting moments in the series come into play in this volume.
36) Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
Overall, I thought this was a really cool finale to the series. A lot of epic stuff goes down in this volume and it was just a fun conclusion to a fun series. I really want to go back at some point and re-read the series in the hopes that I enjoy it and appreciate it more, because I feel like I did a disservice to the series by reading it so quickly. I think that re-reading with the understanding that I currently have of the series, I'd understand some of the stuff a bit more and therefore hopefully enjoy it more.
So far, this has been my least favorite volume of Saga, but I did still definitely enjoy it. Overall, this series has been pretty solid, but no singular volume has really impressed me. I guess that "monotony" (not a good word for it, but the only one that really makes sense to me??) got a bit tiring with this one, and it made me enjoy it a bit less.
Pretty much the same reasoning that I gave for volume 5. This series is enjoyable, but it's just been solid rather than impressive. I want it to finally wow me, and it continually doesn't. I enjoyed this volume slightly more, so it ended up slightly higher.
I really enjoyed this Poirot novel. Often, it's very hard to keep track of what is going on in Poirot's brain because he's just so intelligent, but there were actually some moments where I was able to follow along with what was going on, and I really enjoyed that. I loved that I figured out one corner of the puzzle, and got the rest of it pieced together for me by Poirot. And it was also a really interesting mystery to try to figure out. It kept me guessing and on my toes. Overall, a really solid Poirot novel.
Once again, I liked this manga adaptation a bit less than the original novel, which I believe I gave either 8.5/10 or 9/10. And it's pretty much for the same reasons as with the first volume. The characters get slightly confused with some of the illustrations, and some of the intricacies are missed out on when changed into a manga format.
This was a really fun, light-hearted novel. I loved the narrator's voice. He was funny, witty, sarcastic, and really relatable. The thing that kept me from loving this book was that the plot wasn't quite as compelling for me. There was always interesting stuff going on, but the plot was a bit choppy, which made it a bit less enjoyable. It was a fun read, and I did really enjoy it, but it hasn't gripped me so much that I feel the need to pick up book 2 ASAP.
I'll mention the same exact criticism about the series not wowing me, but I did feel like this volume was a bit more intriguing and I'm hoping that the series is ramping up for something exciting.
As mentioned above, this is a bindup of the first 2 volumes of this series. The first time I read this, I actually gave it 7.5/10 (3/5) but when I got further in the series, I bumped it up to 4/5. I thought this gave some really interesting and solid background for the series. It really establishes the main character's background and is just really solid setup for the volumes to follow.
This is my least favorite volume in the Death Note series, but it's still a solid volume. The end of original volume 7 is fairly controversial for fans of the series, and is the majority of the reason that this volume is this low. I won't go into detail, but I wasn't a huge fan of it and it took me a while to come to terms with it and accept it.
I love this series, and have enjoyed every volume. That being said, I'm one of those people who's a bit averse to change. The first black edition sets up a really interesting series and this volume is when that setup begins to get twisted, changed, and shuffled around. It took a while for me to actually come to terms with that and appreciate it. I eventually did, but since this was the transition, this was lower on my list of favorites.
This book was rather outside of my comfort zone, but I ended up really enjoying it. It's very complex, jumping around and playing with the timeline in very interesting ways. It's one of those books that is a slow burn, getting you more and more interested as the book goes on. However, I felt like it burned and burned... just to fizzle out with an ending that was a bit unsatisfying. So that's where the points were docked.
This is a solid book, but it's actually my least favorite Brandon Sanderson book. A lot of interesting stuff happened in the finale to this trilogy. There was some really awesome fast-paced action, and even though it was the weakest book in the series, the series was pretty solid overall.
This book is notoriously difficult to describe to people who haven't read it, but it's this very odd mix of a creepypasta/no sleep story and a children's story. That sounds weird, but that's because it is. I thought it was a very unique and endearing story.
23) Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
I really loved this first volume in the Scott Pilgrim series. I immediately connected with Scott as a character and the general tone and humor of the series. This volume is seriously the reason that I want to go back and re-read the whole thing because I really appreciate this first volume and I want to appreciate the rest of it in the same way.
So far, this is my favorite volume in the Monster series. It added some really interesting depth to both the plot and to the antagonist, and the plot was extremely interesting.
The premise of this novel grabbed me really quickly, and the book didn't disappoint. It was a really intriguing thriller, and kept me constantly on the edge of my seat. It was really interesting to follow the main character as he tries to understand what exactly is going on and there are so many complexities that make it incredibly compelling.
This was an incredibly heartwarming story, but I'll talk about that more when we get to volume 1. The reason this one is lower is mostly because some of the logistics underlying this series are finally explained in this volume... and it's an incredibly flimsy explanation. The story is still incredibly endearing and adorable and heartwarming, but it's a bit of a knock on what otherwise is a really great series.
So much interesting stuff goes down in this volume. The series regains its footing a bit after the incident in black edition vol 4 and begins to prepare for the epic finale in B.E. vol 6.
This volume is really where the series gains a lot of momentum. The back and forth between these extremely clever/genius characters is incredibly compelling and just really entertaining to watch. So much intriguing stuff in this volume.
2016 was the year that I finally got through The Queen of the Tearling. I'd tried reading it twice and set it down both times-- not because I didn't enjoy it, but because it's a slower read and took a while to get into it. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The main character, Kelsea, is really likable. The world is well-crafted and really interesting. The plot is a bit slow-paced, but introduces a lot of very compelling aspects. I haven't moved on to book 2, but this was definitely a really interesting introduction to the series.
I don't want to be a broken record, but it's still not quite as good as the original. Gave me lots of feels, but the original was my favorite book of 2014 and a full 10/10 stars, but the manga series still has a few little problems. Still really enjoyed it, but the novels are definitely better.
This was my last read of the year, and oh boy was it a doozy. It's like Jennifer L Armentrout took everything that you hate from Twilight and was like "I'm gonna make you love this." It was one of those books that you just can't put down, and I got so incredibly engrossed in it. It wasn't the best thing that I've ever read, but it was a super fun read.
This was such a great introduction to the Death Note series. Watching our main character, Light, begin to understand the Death Note is really compelling, and getting introduced to L as a character is really interesting as well. The setup for this series is just incredibly compelling and it immediately sucked me into this world and made me want to read more.
This was my first Jennifer L. Armentrout book and it made me want to read every other book she publishes. This is one of the most addicting books I've ever read. I was immediately interested in what exactly was going on, and the suspense and intrigue surrounding the plot and the characters made the book impossible to put down. I was up until 5 AM reading this book, before finally forcing myself to put it down and go to sleep. It was so interesting and just so addicting.
This is a really good introduction to the Reckoners Trilogy. David, our main character, has a really great voice with his failed attempts at humor. The world is really interesting, and the plot is also very compelling. Brandon Sanderson does not disappoint.
And... here he is again. This is definitely my favorite book in the Reckoners Trilogy. I read the majority of it in one sitting because so much stuff was going down and I wanted to find out exactly what all of those things were. The plot is really compelling, the characters are really awesome, and some of the stuff that goes down in this book is just... whoa.
The world of Coda is super cool, and I immediately fell in love with it. It's a dystopian novel centering around music, and if there's anything I love, it's dystopian novels and music. The society is incredibly interesting, and despite the overarching predictability of the novel, there were lots of things along the way that really surprised me, and I really loved it.
This series is only two books in out of an eventual four, but it has completely made me fall in love with it. Both books have really impressed me. The 20s mood that is created in this series is outstanding. The way that Libba Bray weaves together different storylines between different characters is outstanding, and the characters are all so fleshed out and interesting. This one wasn't quite as good as book 1 but oooooh boy is it good. Eagerly waiting for book 3.
This was such an amazing conclusion to what proved to be one of my all-time favorite series. The sheer genius of the characters and of the schemes that they come up with is just so entertaining and so amazing to watch. And it all comes to this amazingly impressive head in volume six that was so complex that even I had trouble keeping up sometimes. It was so epic and so awesome. Seriously, read this series. And then watch the anime.
7) Orange: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1
(Bindup of original vol. 1,2 & 3) by Ichigo Takano
Like I said with vol. 2, this series is adorable. It's just such an endearing story of friends and their love for each other throughout the years and the lengths that they will go to in order to help each other and bring each other happiness. It's just so heartwarming and so adorable and I fell completely in love with this story.
I went into this rather skeptical and came out of it completely in love. At first, it seems to be a Harry Potter fanfic that somehow got published, but it quickly diverts from that into a really wonderful and unique story. It plays with typical tropes in really interesting ways, and at many moments it's just... so... cute. It did take me a little while to get into this, but once I did, I fell completely in love.
This book is epic. Brandon Sanderson, as always, is incredibly impressive. This story is massive. This world is massive. There's so much stuff going on that I can't really even talk about one thing specifically. It did take me a little while to get engrossed in this, but it's a 1000 page book that's the first in a 10 book series. There's a lot of setup, but it's just so well crafted.
Yet another book that I simply couldn't put down. The premise of this novel was so intriguing and the novel certainly didn't let me down. It did slightly rely on some familiar tropes, but personally that didn't take away from my reading experience in any way, shape, or form. The world-build was super interesting, I really loved the characters, the plot kept me intrigued, and there was a cute romance on top of that. This was the total package.
Speaking of the total package, allow me to introduce you to The Chimes. This. Book. Is. Beautiful. It's very heavy on the literary fiction, but it's also a dystopian novel with an incredibly interesting world. Smaill's prose, with all of the musical aspects woven into it, is stunning, and the story is really wonderful as well. The world-build is super solid, and despite the plot being a bit slower in the beginning, it's very intriguing as it continues on. This was longlisted for the ManBooker in 2015 and there's definitely a reason why.
The Mime Order solidified this series as my favorite ongoing series. It's not quite as great as The Bone Season, but I still really loved it. The world in this series is fantastic. I love our main character, Paige, as well as the other key characters in the mix. The plot in this story is also really intriguing and allows us to explore a different section of the world that we didn't get to see too much in the first book. Basically, I'm just really excited about book 3's release in March.
This. Man. Sanderson. He's so good. I love this book so much. It was the ultimate package. The world? Fantastic. The magic system? Holy crap amazing. The characters? LOVED. THEM. The plot? Woven beautifully. Everything was outstanding. Everything. I have nothing bad to say about this book. It's so good.
So, that's my ranking of the books that I read in 2016! Overall, I think it was a really great reading year and I'm very happy with the majority of the books that I read in 2016. Hopefully, my 2017 reading year will be just as great, if not better!
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