books by review

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake      This book has a lot of hype around it. Its beautiful, it has a nice weight when you hold it, it feels like a piece of art, and it had beautiful back and white images of the characters at the end of each of the six sections. The actual story itself leaves a lot to be desired. The plot is about an elite society of magicians, and how six powerful individuals are invited every five years into this society to further develop their powers. Two characters are life-long rivals (and that point is driven home one too many times) and the others don't know each other until they fly to the estate in England to study to enter the society. The design on the cover is gorgeous with the silver illustrations highlighted on the mat black background. All of the characters are fleshed out, and the point of view jumps to all six of them, which got a more than a little confusing. I felt that they were fleshed out for context, but then it went too...

Life Update and Shawshank Repetition  by Stephon King           This week all I've been reading is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and while it's really good and I've really been enjoying it, I'm ready to start something new. I want to read The Coward by Stephen Aryan next (I guess it's the month of authors name 'Stephen'). It sounds really good and it's been staring me down every time I walked into a bookstore,  so I finally brought it home and am going to start it here soon once school work  calms down a little.  Personally, I've got some exciting things coming up with graduation and applying  to jobs and the whole adulting thing, and hanging with some new friends and some trips coming up with some old ones. It's getting warmer out so it's safe to say  I'll be living my best life. Well, thats all for this post!   Enjoy the first day of spring! :)

You've Reached Sam by Dustin Thao You want to feel something. Something  meaningful and intense. You want to feel that thing in your heart and stomach. You want to be moved.      First of all, we need to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of this cover. It has so much detail and I love it when the cover has the characters on it. It makes it look like Julie, the protagonist, is standing in the daylight and Sam is standing in the night and it's just great symbolically. The quote above sums up what I think this book is trying to say. Of course it's about loss and how to carry on during the grieving process, but it's also about why we fall in love with the people we do.  Everyone wants to feel something  intense, in our stomachs and hearts, it's how we know what truly moves us, and when we are moved, we take action. Sam truly moved Julie, and that was why she loved him and why this book is so heartbreaking. A lot of people will be a...

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte      I was in the mood from some classic reading a couple of weeks ago and  Wuthering Heights, hit the spot. I love the classics for many reasons, I love their flowery language and in-depth descriptions (for what honestly).  Above is the most on-point picture of a book I've taken to date. This story takes place in the English country side at two houses, one on top of a hill and one at the bottom, and in between is four miles of moors. I finished this book at a park, and with the temperatures rising above 50's it was nice being outside but it was still very dead and dreary looking, which was exactly the setting of this book.  I would describe this plot as if Romeo and Juliet lived, but never married after falling in love, accepted the  separation, and Juliet went on to marry a noble man, and Romeo couldn't stand it so he disappeared for three years. U...

The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid      What does it mean to be human? S. J. Kincaid tackles that question with this trilogy. Humanity has perfected Artiffical Intelligence centuries ago, back when the elites of society moved to space, some making a home on small astroids and other living on the emperors enormous space ship. With advance technology, advance security is needed to protect vulnerable human beings, so a creature called Diabolic's, are created. These beings are man-made, but they look like humans, only they have superhuman strength and speed, and they are bought and programed to protect one person. The protagonist is a diabolic by the name of Nemesis, and she's programed to protect the daughter of a lesser noble of the empire. The daughter is called to do business on the emperors ship, however, the nobles knew of the emperors cruelness and that if they sent their daughter, they probably would never see her again, so they used ...

Shadow and Bone  by Leigh Barduo I  really enjoyed this series! This was Bardugo's first series, I read Six of Crows first, but Shadow and Bone really helped me understand the power of the Grisha. Overall, I'd say this was a hero's story, with Alina as our hero.  This series was about how the world has a natural balance, and there are Grisha who have a type of ability, and there are three branches, the Corporalki, Etherealki, and the Materialki.  The Corporealki deal in the living and the dead, as in bodily functions. The Etherealki are summoners, meaning they can  summon wind, or fire, or water. Materialki can create things, they're tinkerers. This story focuses on two summoners, the Darkling and Alina. The Darkling has been around for hundreds of years, and he can summon darkness. Alina is born and turns into the Sun Summoner, she can summon light, and they are the only two of their kind. The Darkling is well feared and the second...

Reading Update      In my Reading Fiction course, my professor started class by saying he was going to change some of our lives that day.  Simultaneously, he was going to ruin every movie, book, and basically story telling for us.  He did this by showing us Joseph Cambell's Monomyth concept.  I have a huge interest in writing as well as reading, as they kinda of go hand-in-hand and I found this very interesting fro not only a readers perspective but from that of a writers. The monomyth is the idea that every hero's story can be broken down into these 12 different stages and has 8 different archetypes.       In this installment, I want to breakdown these steps, and in later posts, I'll use this to breakdown the different books I read and talk about on this blog.     I'm going to start with the 12 different stages.                      ...