October Book Haul – #2

Hello, this is my second ever book haul post! Namely, because I usually only buy one book a month, if even. Here is the first haul, if you’re interested. I got a job last month and my paychecks have allowed me a bit more leeway when it comes to book buying, so here we are again. :”D. I have this haul labeled as ‘October’, but likely my future hauls won’t be monthly. I have no idea how I’m going to do it. I’ll figure it out when I get there.

Anyways, I purchased a total of 6 books. Not a lot for some people, but a whole lot for me, haha.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay
Not gonna blurb this one, you all know it.

SAS For Dummies by Stephen McDaniel
This is the only nonfiction I bought this month and the only one I’ve acquired for a long time. I got this book as a supplemental resource for the statistical analysis program I was using in my Data Mining class (but of course, right after I bought the book, my professor changed the software we were using, huff). I still plan on going through it though, since as a bioinformatics computer science student, it’s a good tool for me to know and to put on my resume. So yay, self-learning.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
This one, I’ve read already and it has become one of my favorite books. It’s going to become a movie and Liam Neeson is supposedly voicing the monster. HOW COOL IS THAT. This book is about a boy dealing with guilt and loss and a monster. It’s really good, really spooky, really heart-wrenching.

The Fold by Peter Clines
OH MY GOSH. READ IT. HERE’S MY REVIEW.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
This is Ness’s newest book, came out at the beginning of this month in the States (though September in the UK). This one’s about a guy who’s just trying to live his life as his city gets repeatedly destroyed by some hero and villain or other fighting. It’s basically the story of everyone else. It sounds so fantastic, I’m so excited for it. :”D

Breakable by Tammara Webber
I found this baby on the amazon market place for super cheap. I hunted it down after finished Easy and loving it. I know there’s a third book in the series, which I’ll get to eventually, but for now, this one will do nicely.

And that’s it! Not bad for one month, I don’t think. Hopefully though my spending will slow down – Christmas is coming, need to spend monies on other people, not myself. My guess is my next haul will be after the holidays. I tell people not to buy me things, but sometimes they insist (especially my mother, goodness) so instead of them wasting money on a guess, I give them book titles. They’re relatively cheap, so I don’t feel too bad about receiving them as gifts. @@

Happy reading. :”D

Book Review (Series Review) – Chaos Walking Trilogy

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The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness

Let me start off by saying that this series has become one of my favorites series ever. Ever. I feel like this is a masterpiece and Patrick Ness is a genius. My only wish is to meet him so I can give him a hug for putting me on such an emotional roller coaster with such a beautiful piece of literature. I want leather-bound signed super nice copies and they will be the stars of my library. Wow.

I’ve written a review about the second book earlier in my blog, but after finishing the third book about twenty minutes ago, I couldn’t just do a review on it alone. The entire series as a whole is so extraordinary. The third book of course is fantastic and probably my favorite of the three, but even then it’s only by a string. No single book in this series would be nearly as good if the others were not there to support it. I wish I would have read them in a row with no other books in between. I feel like I would have loved them even more, but the breaks allowed me to break out of the universe a bit unfortunately (though lucky me, Patrick Ness’s writing is so intoxicating it only took me about a chapter in each book to get pulled right back in).

But anyways.

The Chaos Walking Trilogy is a young adult science fiction story, where when you come into the first book, you’re thrown into the world of a boy named Todd. He lives in a settlement on a new planet, all of the women are dead and nothing is kept secret. Every thought, every significant or insignificant picture, word, feeling that crosses your mind, is broadcast out for anything within the vicinity to hear. Even the animals’ thoughts can be heard. All of these thoughts culminate together in an endless wall of noise that is impossible to escape. If you run out of the settlement into the woods, you hear the bugs. Nowhere can you leave the noise behind. One day, Todd is out with his dog Manchee… and he comes across a patch of silence.

That is what drew me into the book. Patrick Ness’s writing and characters and imagery kept me there. The way he presents his words on the page have just as much of an effect as what the words actually say. I hope that makes sense. Once you open the book and see, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Throughout the series, Ness’s characters go through such personal development, good and bad. After a while, the perspectives between the chapters start to alternate, allowing you to read for more than just Todd’s point of view. And none of these perspectives did I find boring or irritating. I was engrossed in every character while at the same time craving to hear the thoughts of the others.

As the series progressed, it became almost a common occurrence at the end of a chapter to yell some form of wordless despair or joy or whatever the author left me with. Each chapter was intense, especially getting into the last two books. I teared up more than once, I was humbled, I laughed. This book put me through such a range of emotions, man. I just couldn’t (can’t!) get enough. There are three short stories set in this universe that I have yet to read. I will do so as soon as I’m able (one’s in my second book, which I have lent out!).

Apologies if this review is nothing more than me vomiting words of love on a page, but that is the impression this series left me with. Nothing but adoration, joy, despair… anything and everything that comes with finding your new favorite book. Go read it.

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars
Hnnngh

Book Review: The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

How do I put into words my feelings about this book. Hm. I suppose I should start with a synopsis.

The Ask and the Answer is book two in the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. I read the first book last year and rated it four stars. This book though, I loved so much more. I received this book as birthday gift from my lovely friend Acey last summer and only got to it now. (So thank you because I know you’re reading :P)

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the synopsis of this particular book, but for the overall trilogy, it goes like this:
The main character is a boy named Todd, who lives in a little town where you can hear the thoughts of everyone and everything around you. The cows think ‘grass grass!’ and the dogs think ‘gotta poop!’. And the people of the town, their thoughts congeal together to create an unending noise, one that follows everyone day and night. Yep, even peoples’ dreams show up in the noise.

And then one day, Todd stumbles upon a patch of silence.

AND THEN SO MUCH WONDERFUL HAPPENS.

This book blew me away. The first book was good, this book was great. Easily my favorite book of the year so far (yep, more so than The Hitchhiker’s Guide, which I’m head-over-heels for). The writing, the characters, the plot. All of it was wonderful.

The writing flowed very well in this book. I found myself reading 100 or 150 pages at a time, which is unusual for me. I’m definitely more of a ‘one or two chapter per sitting’ reader. I couldn’t put this one down though. (and lucky for me, I have book three, so that bugger is next). The way that the thoughts of people and animals are written in this book is always so fascinating. It’s really hard to keep my eyes from darting across the page to read what is obviously a thought before I actually get to that part. It’s addicting.

The characters in this one, wow. SO MUCH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. I loooved this book, it made me so attached to everyone in it, bad and good. And finally the plot. Without giving spoilers, let’s just say the plot is twisting and turning and cliffy and wrenching and just ugh, read it read it.

And when I was approaching the end of this book, about fifty pages away, I was prepping myself for a cliffhanger – I knew it would be coming. I just knew it. What I didn’t know is that the last 20 pages of my edition was a short story of something else. Meaning my cliffhanger came twenty pages sooner than I was expecting. I scared my boyfriend, who was sitting next to me at the time, when I yelled ‘WHAT?! NOOO’ and slammed the book against my face (which is how you properly display dismay at a cliffhanger, btw). So yes, third book is calling to me. Will read it next. Go read this book, you know you want to.

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars
My heart, it’s in knots.

February TBR 2015

This month’s TBR is going to be a bit shorter than last month’s. Classes suck butts. I never thought I’d say I missed working, but I miss working. I’m not used to the homework, even after being back in school for a semester already. I need time management skills! Anyway, on to the shortened TBR.

Like last month, I pulled a slip from my TBR Jar, part of the Challenge set by Katytastic on youtube. And this month, I got ‘Read a series finale’. When I pulled that one, my brain froze. I wasn’t at any point in a series to read a finale. And then I remember I picked up The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness last week, so I’m going to finish that and then read Of Monsters and Men, finishing the Chaos Walking trilogy. (I also have a novella in that series on my tablet, so we’ll see if I get to that or not).

Otherwise, I think I’m going to try to participate in #yearofcosmere, a year-long read-a-long created by a few different people on youtube. It’s a read-along to go through all of Brandon Sanderson’s books that are set in his Cosmere universe. I own two Brandon Sanderson novels and have been meaning to start them, so why not now? February’s book is The Final Empire, first book in the Mistborn Trilogy. This book sounds really fascinating – the magic system alone sounds cool. This one I will probably have to get from the library, since after the Patrick Ness books, I won’t have made another 5 books read to buy one. (unless I go crazy and read a lot of manga again) If you’d like to learn more about YearofCosmere, here and here and here are a few different videos explaining them by a few different founders of the read-along (there are a lot more, these are just the ones that popped into my head first).

So yes: Three books. Wish me luck.