Top Ten Tuesday

This is a neat weekly feature over at a blog I really enjoy, The Broke and the Bookish.  They read books similar to some that I've been reviewing, and they're fun and they write well.  Totally worth checking out!

Top Five Blogging Confessions

1. Reviewing ARCs makes me a little nervous.  What if I read a book and I don't like it at all and I write about that and then the ENTIRE REST OF THE BLOGGING COMMUNITY loves it?  I look like a weirdo.

2. I let reviews-to-be-written pile up horribly, until I have a bajillion book reviews to write and I've half-forgotten the books.

3. I accept a ton more Netgalley egalleys than I actually read.  *hangs head in shame*

4. I feel really overwhelmed by my TBR lists.  Yes, plural.  I've been married for 5 years, and I haven't made a dent in reading all the books he brought into our combined library.  And then there's the books I buy.  And the ARCs and egalleys.  And the books recommended to me by friends and loved ones.  And my own TBR list.  And the books that are being talked about in the book blogs.

5. I haven't told hardly anyone that I know in person that I book blog.  My mom knows (but doesn't read it) and my hubby knows (and doesn't read it).  I need to be more confident and let people know that I'm here.

I couldn't come up with 10 this week... what about you?  What are your blogging confessions?  Any tried-and-true advice on my confessions?

The Shadow Throne by Jennifer Nielsen | Audiobook Review

(Like I said for the first two books, I really like the simple and effective covers on the books in this trilogy.)

My feelings:  meh, bordering on blech.  I gave Book 2 of the trilogy 4 of 5 stars for having pirates.  I'm tempted to go back and lower it to 3 stars to discourage people from reading it.  (Because we all know how that works with trilogies.  If you read the first and second ones you always figure that you might as well read the third one and see how it wraps up.)  Read the first one, definitely.  The False Prince totes rocks my boat.  But it's a steep ride downhill after that.

There was almost no action in this book.  The first book is full of swordplay and hijinks as the boys are trained to become possible puppet princes.  It's fun and it works for the intended audience.  Lots of middle grade boys would love to get their hands on swords and bows & arrows and horses and knives.  The second book literally has swashbuckling* pirates.  This one?  Jaron participates in only one freaking battle and one fight the entire book.  And he doesn't even play a very active role in either.  And the whole book is about a war.  Hmm.

*swashbuckling:  engage in daring and romantic adventures with ostentatious bravado or flamboyance.

There was a lot of self-righteous self-sacrifice from Jaron in this book.  He's constantly trying to sacrifice himself for others or "for the cause" in this book and it just gets aggravating.  He whines about it.  A lot.  And he's self-righteous about it.  And ok, yeah, save your friends.  I get that.  But he's THE KING.  He needs to lead his people, not try to get himself killed!  I think my eyeroll count topped two dozen with all the stupid self-righteous decisions Jaron made.

Jaron is sitting in jail pining and wasting away for the first third of the book.  I'm not kidding.  He goes on a self-imposed hunger strike, which he ends at the drop of a hat for a not good enough reason.  Idiot.  So that's a lot of audiobook time stuck in a jail cell with Jaron who is just not holding it together emotionally, mentally, or physically.

There is a lot of conversation in this book.  It's a middle-grades boy book?  We need more action!  Less talk!  More swords!  Less feelings!

The ending wraps up entirely too neatly.  I won't give spoilers in case you decide to actually read this book, but the ending is unbelievably fast and neat and tidy and happy.

If you read and enjoyed the first two books you might consider reading this in order to wrap up the trilogy.  But I think at this point I recommend reading The False Prince and not continuing on to the second and third books.

Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Team Tynga's Reviews.  You can find their blog here:  www.tyngasreviews.com.  This weekly meme, which Tynga's team posts on Saturdays, is all about sharing the books that you received or purchased over the previous week.  Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your own Stack!

ARCs and egalleys

Fairy-Tale Success: A Guide to Entrepreneurial Magic by Adrienne Arieff with Beverly West

How We Fall by Kate Brauning

Vampires of Manhattan: The New Blue Bloods Coven by Melissa de la Cruz

Madame Tussaud's Apprentice: An Untold Story of Love in the French Revolution by Kathleen Benner Duble--love this cover!  And I love the history connection to such an interesting person!

The Fall by Bethany Griffin--absolutely love this cover too!

Who R U Really? by Margo Kelly

Pennyroyal Academy by M.A. Larson

The Paper Cowboy by Kristin Levine-I really liked The Lions of Little Rock, so I have a lot of faith in this one being good.

Stone Cove Island by Suzanne Myers

Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson-I've heard fantastic things about this one.

Gathering Darkness: A Falling Kingdoms Novel by Morgan Rhodes

The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard-love love love Pretty Little Liars, so I'm excited about this new series.

I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories From the Stacks by Gina Sheridan-looking forward to lots of laughs here!

Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White

New/Purchased

My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag: And Other Things You Can't Ask Martha by Jolie Kerr--I've already read and reviewed this one and I loved it so much I bought myself a copy!

Library

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare-on CD, for the commute

Son by Lois Lowry-on CD, for the commute

The Private School Murders by James Patterson with Maxine Paetro-on CD, for the commute.  I read Confessions of a Murder Suspect when it first came out and loved it!  You can't find it on my library's shelf because I'm forever handing it to kids to read.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd | Book Review

(My copy, unfortunately, had the Oprah Book Club sticker on the front.  Ugh.  But I found a picture of the cover without the sticker to put here.  It looks nice, right?  So why ruin it with an Oprah sticker?)

Happy Fourth of July!  And what better book to review on Independence Day than a book in which the main characters are trying to earn independence for slaves?  I love when things work out nicely like that!

The Invention of Wings is told from dual point of views.  There's Sarah, who is a white girl in Charleston, a daughter of a wealthy judge and plantation owner.  (She's also a redhead, but that hardly figures into the story.)  Then there's Handful, a slave owned by Sarah's family.  The book opens on Sarah's 11th birthday, when her mother ties a ribbon around Handful's neck and presents her to Sarah, as a birthday gift.  Sarah goes against everything and tries to refuse the gift.  Just a few years prior, Sarah had been witness to one of her family's slaves being whipped and it had scarred her.  Literally.  From that day forward she has a pronounced stutter to her speech that she did not have before.  She knows, even at that young age, that owning a person and treating them as property is not right.  However, she is young and her parents definitely overrule her and she ends up with Handful as her personal ladies' maid.

The story becomes more full, more fleshed out, in the telling of Handful's point of view.  The entire book alternates between Sarah and Handful, so the reader gets both sides of each story.  Handful, of course, has troubles of her own.  Her mother is definitely not a quietly obedient slave.  She steals and shirks work and even runs off for entire days at a time without an official pass.  Handful spends much of the book worrying about her mauma.  And Handful herself yearns for freedom.  She knows that there is more out there.  Sarah has secretly taught her to read, and this helps her later on as she becomes more brazen in her search for freedom.

There's a very poignant line in the book where Handful observes to Sarah that while she is bodily enslaved, she is free in her mind but Sarah, while free to move about the city is enslaved in her mind.  Handful says this to Sarah soon after Sarah undergoes a very public and very embarrassing break-up with a gentleman who had duped her.  Sarah has dreams and aspirations of a career, but is unable to act upon them because of societal mores.  Handful is free to dream as big as she wants; her physical shackles are the larger problem.

There are so many good reasons to love this book, the setting being one of them.  I just absolutely adore Charleston.  I love reading about the fancy dresses and the old society.  Yes, there were some problems, such as slavery, but still... ah, the romance of it!  Another reason to love the book: strong female characters.  Both Sarah and Handful are brimming over with gumption!  I love how they don't think twice before speaking wildly out of turn.  Handful would say things to Sarah sometimes that would have definitely earned her punishment from any other master.  And Sarah hardly thought twice before speaking up and out against her father or brothers. 

The Invention of Wings is purely fictional, but has a few shallow roots in actual history, and I love that Sue Monk Kidd takes the time to explain all the connections at the end of the book.  She delineates between facts that she unearthed and the fiction she wove in between, and gives suggested resources in case the reader wants to pursue the subject further.

One part that is pure fiction is the ending, but I LOVED it!  My sister-in-love had recommended this book to me and I texted her the moment I reached the end to ask her opinion: happily ever after?  Or no?  We agreed to go with happily ever after.  It's one of those endings where the reader gets to decide.  You're not left hanging; it's definitely an ending; but you get to decide whether the characters in question reach their destination happily or whether someone interferes.  

Next time I'm in Charleston, I may just have to see if I can walk past Sarah's house!  

*I received my copy from my public library.

The Runaway King by Jennifer Nielsen | Audiobook Review

(I like the simplicity of the covers in this trilogy.  They all coordinate and they convey the feel of the books very well.)

Throwback Review!

I originally listened to The Runaway King in May 2013.  I gave it 4 of 5 stars on Goodreads and didn't write a review.  For quite awhile I wasn't writing reviews of audiobooks because I didn't feel like I could be fair.  I listen to audiobooks exclusively during my commute to and from work and it's a beast of a commute and sometimes I'm so mad at traffic that it doesn't matter how good the audiobook is... I just don't want to be sitting parked on the freeway in rush hour traffic for one more minute!  I feel like I've gotten a lot more objective about the audiobooks now that I've got a few audiobook reviews under my belt.

Here's the plot summary from Goodreads:

A kingdom teetering on the brink of destruction.  A king gone missing.  Who will survive?  Find out in the highly anticipated sequel to Jennifer A. Nielsen's blockbuster The False Prince!

Just weeks after Jaron has taken the throne, an assassination attempt forces him into a deadly situation.  Rumors of a coming war are winding their way between the castle walls, and Jaron feels the pressure quietly mounting within Carthya.  Soon, it becomes clear that deserting the kingdom may be his only hope of saving it.  But the further Jaron is forced to run from his identity, the more he wonders if it is possible to go too far.  Will he ever be able to return home again?  Or will he have to sacrifice his own life in order to save the kingdom?

The stunning second installment of the Ascendance Trilogy takes readers on a roller-coaster ride of treason and murder, thrills and peril, as they journey with the Runaway King!

I don't actually remember this book in great detail, so it obviously didn't leave much of an impact on me.  Hmm.  I do remember pirates, and I believe that's what bumped this book from a mediocre 3 stars to a pretty decent 4 stars.  I like pirates.  There was also plenty of action in this book, like in The False Prince.  This is also where we get to know more about Amarinda (sp?), the princess that Jaron is supposed to be marrying.  I remember this felt a little weird because I think Jaron is only 15?  16?  I think I had a misconception from The False Prince and was even picturing him even younger than that, like 14 years old.  So the brief discussions of love and marriage (I promise there's not too many) felt weird to me.  So this book definitely didn't pack the punch that the first book did, but still worth reading if you read and enjoyed The False Prince.

George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade with Don Yaeger | Book Review

I just love reading nonfiction books on George Washington.  I've read well over a dozen and I'm not bored yet.  If I remember correctly, I added this to my own tbr list and within days my sister emailed me to say that I should add this to my tbr list.  She knows me well.  :)  

George Washington's Secret Six didn't actually focus much at all on the man himself and instead concentrated nearly entirely on the spy ring members.  I focused on Revolutionary American History in college and I hadn't heard of the Culper ring before; I was very excited to learn more.  The hubby and I had been watching the TV show White Collar and one of the episodes has Mossy obsessing over this spy ring, then this book came to my attention.  And I must say, this is one of the most accessible adult nonfiction history books I've read!  Accessible meaning: relatively short, to the point, and with excellent prose.

That being said, I want to go ahead and address all the negative reviews on Goodreads.  I feel like most of the people writing these reviews would maybe be happier reading one of the suggested further reading books listed by the authors at the end of the book.  The authors did a ton of research and then boiled it down to make it accessible to the general public.  Not everyone always wants to tackle a 400+ page dense history book that mentions every single known fact about the subject.  In other words, I feel like this poor book may be just a little misjudged.  I thought it was fantastic, and have already passed the recommendation back to my sister, telling her that it was full of neat information about a little-known spy ring without getting bogged down in too much background or detail.

During the Revolutionary War, the British managed to take Long Island.  A lot of people feared that this could cost the colonists the war.  Most of the Loyalists hoped it would cost the revolutionaries the war!  New York became a safe place for Loyalists and a dangerous place for colonists.  Like, there were British soldiers stationed searching cargo boats going back and forth!  And British soldiers were commandeering supplies and foodstuffs, raping women, and demanding quarter in private homes.  They were really not cool.  Five men and one woman were enlisted by George Washington to act as spies.  They were to keep an ear to the ground and gather information that could help the colonial army re-take New York.  All of the agents were issued invisible ink and elaborate chains of communication were set up so that no one was discovered.  One agent, the female known as Agent 355, is still unknown today.  That's how good the Culper ring were at covering their tracks!  

Yes, the authors took a little liberty in re-imagining conversations between members of the spy ring.  But they did so after lots and lots and lots of reading and research.  I feel like they kept true to the original feelings of the spies, and I feel like adding some conversation into the book only improved the comprehension.  

I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.  You do not need to have a deep understanding of the Revolutionary War era in order to learn a lot of neat history from this book.  The prose is excellent and never feels bogged down.  It's also a pretty short book for being adult history nonfiction.

*I received my copy from my public library.

Top Ten Tuesday

This is a neat weekly feature over at a blog I really enjoy, The Broke and the Bookish.  They read books similar to some that I've been reviewing, and they're fun and they write well.  Totally worth checking out!

Top Ten Classics

(There is always a little debate about what a "classic" book is.  These are the top ten books I've read that I would consider to have stood the test of time... in my (very) humble opinion!)

1. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.  If you're a regular reader here, you'll already be familiar with my obsession with this series.  LOVE THEM.

2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  This is one of the best books of all time, all categories, hands down.  Especially in today's political climate: a must read.

3. Complete Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway.  I went through a phase in high school/college where I read EVERYTHING Hemingway.  I was obsessed.  You know the teenage girls who are all squealing over John Green right now?  That was me in high school... but about Hemingway.  I was def an odd duck.

4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  I swoon at this book.  I love it!  And I'm not alone: dozens of books have been published since that build on the same plot devices.  Love it!

5. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I think I've read The Hobbit 3 or 4 times and the trilogy 3 times and they never get old.

6. The Shining and Doctor Sleep by Stephen King.  The Shining is already a "cult classic" of sorts, and I think Doctor Sleep (the sequel) will be too.  King is just such a fantastic writer!  I think he's the only author to give me literal goosebumps while reading his books.

7. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.  I think this is a sleeper classic.  Most people haven't discovered it yet.  In fact, with a publication date in 1975, it might just not be old enough to be a classic yet.

8. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.  Who doesn't love this little gem?

9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  The South.  A plucky kid standing up against racial prejudice.  What's not to love?

10. The second half of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  I was waaaay too confused to enjoy the first half, but when I finally figured out the characters and plot I ended up liking the end.