Top Ten Tuesday--Best 10 Books Read During the First 6 Months of 2012

Top 10 Tuesday (#6)

Top 10 Tuesday is a blog hop hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. They post a Top 10 topic & other blogs participate & link their blog post to their website. It is a way to get to know your follow bloggers & get more traffic on your own blog! If you have a book blog, you can definitely participate! If not, you can still post your answers below in the comments!

This week's Top Ten Tuesday is:

 Top Ten Tuesday Freebie (whatever topic you'd like!)

The topic I came up with is perfect because the first 6 months of 2012 just ended a few days ago. Here's the topic: 

Best 10 Books Read from January 2012-June 2012 (First 6 Months of 2012)

(This is kind of in order. It is very hard to categorize books that you love.)

1. Delirium

2. The Host (review)

3. Insurgent (review)

4. Shatter Me (review)

5. Inside Out

6. Outside In

7. Divergent

8. Crossed (review)

9. Matched (review)

10. Pandemonium

Top Ten Tuesday--Books For People Who Like Lauren Oliver

Top 10 Tuesday (#5)

Top 10 Tuesday is a blog hop hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. They post a Top 10 topic & other blogs participate & link their blog post to their website. It is a way to get to know your follow bloggers & get more traffic on your own blog! If you have a book blog, you can definitely participate! If not, you can still post your answers below in the comments!  


This week's topic for Top Ten Tuesday is: 

Top Ten Books For People Who Like Lauren Oliver (author of Delirium)

(I have 7 Listed)

1. Divergent

2. Matched

3. Shatter Me

4. Shiver

5. The Host

6. Inside Out

7. The Hunger Games

Ship Sunday--June 24, 2012

Ship Sunday is a weekly blog hop hosted & created by Emily @ Emily Hearts Books. Each week a book or a book series will be listed & I will discuss my favorite "ship" from that book or book series.Everyone else is welcome to participate each week. If you don't have a blog feel free to comment or if you have a blog & decide to participate,please link back to Emily Hearts Books & post a link to your blog post in the comments! Thanks! For more information check out the features page.




This week's book or book series:

               
                                                  My Favorite Couple from Matched:
                                                                Xander & Cassia

My favorite ship from Matched is the one least likely to end up together: Xander & Cassia. It's not that I don't like Ky, I do like Ky. I also don't like Xander that much more than Ky (I like both guys), it's just that I like the whole "ending up with your best friend" type of thing. It's what I want in real life. I want a guy who becomes my best friend to become my boyfriend, and then we end up married. I think that sounds so cute. 


What's your favorite ship from the Matched Trilogy? Comment below, or if you have a blog, post your link!

                     

Top Ten Tuesday--June 12, 2012

Top 10 Tuesday (#3)


Top 10 Tuesday is a blog hop hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. They post a Top 10 topic & other blogs participate & link their blog post to their website. It is a way to get to know your follow bloggers & get more traffic on your own blog! If you have a book blog, you can definitely participate! If not, you can still post your answers below in the comments!

This week's topic for Top Ten Tuesday is: 

Top Ten Books I'd Recommend As Good Beach Reads

Nice topic for the beginning of the summer! Here's my list in no order:

1. The Hunger Games

2. The Host

3. Delirium

4. Matched

5. Inside Out

6. Divergent

7. Harry Potter

8. The Scorpio Races

9. A Kiss in Time

10. The Last Song

So what about you? What are your Top Ten Books You'd Recommend As Good Beach Reads?

Fictional Couples

As some of you may or may not know, I love romance! Romance is probably my favorite element of a good book. However, in some books, the romance doesn't work (at least not for me), but that's a different story. In this post I will list fictional couples that I prefer. Some I obviously like more than others (the ones in red are the ones that I LOVE, those in bold but aren't red are ones I like but don't love obsessively, & the ones in that aren't either are the ones that I'm okay with--if they end up together, great! If not, who cares?).  I'm also not going to discuss whether or not these couples actually end up together or not (some don't). In some cases (those of which have more sequels coming out) nobody knows if these couples will end up together in the end.

Divergent

Tobias & Tris

Harry Potter

Ron & Hermione

Harry & Cho OR Harry & Luna

Luna & Neville

The Hunger Games

Katniss & Peeta

Gale & Madge (kind of)

Finnick & Annie

Delirium

Alex & Lena

The Insider Series

Riley & Trella

Scorpio Races

Sean & Puck

Matched

Cassia & Ky OR Cassia & Xander

These are the only ones I can think of at the moment. I will post another list at the end of the summer after I read more books.

-E

Matched Videos

Hey guys! Here are some awesome Matched videos that you should all check out! In the first video the author discusses the book. I don't think there are any spoilers in it.

The second video is the Matched trailer. I love it. It's pretty awesome.

That's all for today! Just thought I should post them!

-E

Book Review: Matched

Yay! My first book review on my blog! Just a heads up, there are a few very minor spoilers in this review, nothing major of course.

Photo Source 

Book Description from Goodreads:

"Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. 

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow."

Title: Matched

Author: Ally Condie

Year of Release: 2010

Genre: Dystopia & Romance

Part of a Series?: Yes, it's the first book in the Matched Trilogy

Sequel(s): Crossed & Reached

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Comments: To be completely honest, at first I thought this book was really slow moving without much character growth or plot. Around page 150 or so, things started to get better. It kept getting better from there. I ended up liking it. It's not my favorite book in the world, but I still enjoyed it. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail of the story itself, but it kept my attention. In regards to the romance, it seemed kind of "blah" at first. I didn't care about either Ky or Xander, especially Ky. Ky's character seemed very undeveloped and I didn't understand why Cassia liked him. I eventually grew to like both guys. The romance is definitely a lot more subtle and reserved but when things actually happened I enjoyed it more. It was cute. I guess I was just used to reading stories in which the romance occurs fast.

              It's strange because for once I actually like both guys equally. Unlike in Delirium where I like both guys but not equally-- I still prefer one over the other, I like both guys and don't care who Cassia ends up with. I have a good feeling though of who it will be. 

Recommended to: Delirium Fans, it's not as good as Delirium but it's better than Pandemonium. It's a good book to read while waiting for the third Delirium book

Also, if you have read Crossed, the sequel, please do not post any spoilers in the comments. Thanks!

-E

New York Time's Best Seller's List

A quick post to congratulate two of my favorite authors, Lauren Oliver & Veronica Roth on both making it to the NYT best seller's list this week!! Lauren Oliver's Pandemonium which came out at the end of February is #4 under chapter books. Her book Delirium is also #8 under paperbacks! Veronica Roth's Divergent is #1 under paperbacks!

Also, congratulations to the author of the current book that I'm reading, Ally Condie. Her book Matched is #7 under paperbacks!

Congratulations again to all three! Divergent, Delirium, & Pandemonium are all awesome books & Matched is pretty good so far! I'm about 260 pages into it.

-E