City of Ashes - Book Review

Well hello there internet, it's been a while! I've kind of neglected this blog this month as it was essay writing month, and lectures started again, so it's been a university centred month which hasn't left much time for anything else. But i'm back now! And i have quite a few blog posts that i already know i want to write, so hopefully i'll get back into the swing of things quite easily!

Anyway, today i'm here with a book review! Ooh how exciting! One of my new years resolutions was to review every book i read this year, even the re-reads, and today i'm starting that! Just as a warning: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!!

I started this year off with a book i was certain that i would enjoy reading before philosophy books took over my life. So i picked up my much loved copy of City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare.

I plan on re-reading the Mortal Instruments series before City of Heavenly Fire comes out in a few months, so City of Ashes was the obvious choice for first book of the year. I love love love this series and i love it even more each time i read one of them! Here we go with the review!

First of all: SCREW YOU VALENTINE!

Okay, now to actual reviewing! I love this book, possibly more than i love City of Bones...but it's a very close call! (Then again, i just love them all so much, i can't decide between them!) I adore everything about this book, seriously. Simon becoming a vampire, Alec and Magnus, Alec's almost coming out, Jace in general, the Inquisitor, every single thing! I'm pretty certain that this is the best second book in a series that i have ever read, and that's pretty amazing seeing as it had such an incredible first book to live up to!!

Jace and Clary...ugh someone needs to go give them the biggest hugs ever, okay? At the end when Clary decides to finally tell Jace how she feels and how she doesn't care about the whole sibling thing, and then he tells her he's going to fight his feelings and be the brother she needs because he thinks that's what she wants...ugh my heart! It's such an emotional moment in the book and it's written oh so perfectly! And no matter how many times i read it i am in no way prepared for it!

The battle on the boat is so great. I really love the way this whole thing is described, it's just so wonderful, even if some of it could have been shortened/cut out, i still really love it. The best part however was the small break from the battle where it cuts to Alec and Magnus is Luke's truck. You know what i mean. The part where Magnus basically tells Alec that he loves him and Alec didn't want to hear it. Ugh so not okay! 

The whole Alec storyline genuinely makes me very sad, and this is one of the moments that makes me want to reach into the book and give him the biggest hug ever, because i think that's what he needs more than anything.

See you soon!!

Meghan x 

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2014 Bookish Resolutions!

Happy New Year internet!! I hope you all had a wonderful new year however you spent the night. As everyone knows the new year is the time when people make resolutions of things they want to do that year, mainly to improve certain aspects of their lives, and i want to do make a list of resolutions all to do with books, reading habits, and all things that revolve around the two. 

Here we go!

1) Make more time for fiction!

Okay this seems like a bit of a silly one, even to me, but for the second half of this year fiction has kind of fell away from my immediate reading pile due to all the reading i have to do for uni. Even though my uni reading isn't going to die down until around September i still want to make more time to read for fun. I miss fiction and i miss getting lost in new worlds, and i'm definitely going to make a lot more of an effort this year!

2) Review everything i read!

So this one is pretty self explanatory, i want to review every single book i read. Well, i want to review all of the books i read for fun, i'll save you from the pain of all the uni reading. I really enjoy reviewing books and i haven't done it as much as i wanted to since i started this blog back in June so i want that to change in 2014.

3) Finish more series'!

I have this bad habit of starting a series, and then just never reading the last book. So this year i will change that! All but one of the books i have planned for immediate reading are the last book in a series. I need to know how these stories end and i keep putting them off because i don't want them to end. I will finish all the series'!

4) Only buy a book for every book i finish!

This is basically me putting myself on a book buying ban for 2014. I keep buying books and then not reading them for the longest time, so i'm only allowing myself to buy a book when i finish one. However i want to add a part to this and say that before i buy a book, with the exception of the two i'm going on the hunt for tomorrow and the one i have on pre-order, i want to read at least ten books before i buy more books.

5) Only buy books i know i'm going to read!

I always buy books that i think will be great when i'm in the shop, then when i get home i realise that i will probably never read them and end up giving them away, so that needs to stop! I have this plan of really looking into books and reviews before i actually buy a book, i know that i won't stick to that plan but it's nice to have it there to start with. 

6) Get more involved in Read-a-thons and BookTube-a-thon!

I really love the idea of these, and i watch all of the videos about them, and then i never take part in any of them, and i want that to change! So starting this year i'm going to take part in any that i can, and hopefully that will help with a few more of my resolutions!

Finally, 7) Start making videos!

I've wanted to get involved with the BookTube community for so long, and i think this is the year i'm going to finally start! I'm not sure when i'm going to start but i know that it's something i really want to do before the end of the year!

Meghan x

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Top 5...#8

Hello there internet! Today i'm here with another of my Top 5's, this time i'm going on over to the BookTube community and discussing the Top 5 BookTubers i have loved watching during 2013!

Now i love a lot of the people in the BookTube community and it has been really hard to narrow it down to five, but i did it! So, if you haven't already, go and check out all these wonderful people!

5 - Jesse (jessethereader)

Okay so i've gone back to try and find exactly when i started watching Jesse's videos and i'm pretty sure this video was the first one of his i watched, and then i immediately subscribed. I love Jesse's videos and i think he seems like one of the nicest guys in the world. His videos put a smile on my face and he has an awesome taste in books! 

4 - Raeleen (padfootandprongs07)

So this is the first video of Raeleen's i ever watched, and that was back at the end of 2011...i so didn't think it was that long ago! But i love Raeleen's channel. Her reviews are great, her tags are great, she's just great really. I'm pretty sure she was the first person from BookTube that i ever watched, and i'm still watching her videos 2 years later, so clearly she's one of the best ones!

3 - Catriona (LittleBookOwl)

Catriona is probably one of my favourite people on YouTube in general. Her videos are funny and she seems really awesome and  she has a great taste in books, which is always a good thing! She genuinely seems like one of the nicest people and i just love watching her videos because she seems so lovely. I honestly cannot remember when i started watching her videos, or what the first one was, but they're all great so you should definitely check her out!

2 - Ben (benjaminoftomes)

Okay i'm pretty sure Ben is the only English BookTuber i watch? And he's great! (wow how many times can i say great in one post?) Ben makes me laugh in basically every video he posts and i really love that. He's probably also the BookTuber i think has the most similar taste in books..? Maybe? Either way he likes really great books, and he makes really great videos and subscribing to him was one of the best things i did YouTube wise in 2013!

1 - Ariel (Ariel Bissett )

Ariel is not only my favourite BookTuber, she is also just my favourite person on the whole of YouTube and the internet in general. I adore all of her videos. She makes me laugh, and she makes me think about things, she makes me want to read books i wouldn't normally read, and her videos just generally make me happy. I started watching her videos from, i think, the third video she put up on her channel? (I know she had a channel before, but i'm not 100% on what that was called...) But i found her on 'Ariel Bissett' and i've just loved her and her videos ever since!

So there we go! My top 5 BookTubers of 2013! I can't wait to see more from them and the rest of the wonderful BookTubers that i watch in 2014, and i hope you all have a wonderful New Years!

Meghan x

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Opposites Book Tag

Hello again internet! I'm back today with another tag, we all know how i love a good book tag. This one was created by this person and i saw it over on Heather's channel.  I thought that it was a pretty good tag and so here i am, looking at all the opposites in my lovely books.

Here we go!

1) What was the first book in your collection/the last book you bought?

Okay, so i'm pretty sure the first book in my 'collection' was This is the Bear by Sarah Hayes at least it is the first book i remember being read to me when i was really little. It's such a great children's book and i cannot recommend it enough! And i'm pretty sure the last book i bought was Teardrop by Lauren Kate, which is the first book in her new trilogy. It sounds really interesting and it is one of the prettiest books i think i have ever seen.

2) What was a cheap book/which was an expensive one?

I'm pretty sure (how many times can i say that phrase!?!?) that the cheapest book i bought was The Host by Stephenie Meyer which i got for a whopping 75p!! How good is that?! The most expensive book i think i've bought is a book called Subjective Universality in Kant's Aesthetics  by Ross Wilson. I really love this book, it's fascinating, but it was a ridiculous £52! Outrageous. 

3) What is a book with a male protagonist/one with a female protagonist?

I'm going to go with The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger for the book with a male protagonist, and Fallen by Lauren Kate for the female protagonist. I love both of these books, Catcher is my favourite book of all time and the Fallen series is one of my favourite series'. 

4) What is a book you read really fast/one that took you ages to read?

I think that the book i read the fastest was Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. I read this book in one sitting, and i absolutely adore it! It's such an incredible book and it's so easy to just get lost in the story and just not stop reading, i highly, highly recommend it! The book that took my the longest to read was probably 1984 by George Orwell. Now i do really like this book, but it's definitely not one of my favourites, nor was it particularly easy for me to read because i was so disinterested in everything that happened. 

5) Which book has a pretty cover/which one has an ugly cover?

For a pretty cover i'm going to go for Rapture by Lauren Kate. This whole series has beautiful covers, but i think Rapture is my favourite. And for the ugly cover i'm going to go for Paper Towns by John Green. I'm really not a fan of the cover that i have, i have seen some beautiful covers for it though, like this one.  

6) What is a book national to you/what is an international one?

So i'm guessing this one is a book set where i live, which would be England, and international being anywhere else in the world. So i'm going to go for A Witch in Winter by Ruth Warburton which is set somewhere in England. For international i'm going to go for City of Bones by Cassandra Clare as that's set in NYC and that's somewhere i really want to go.

7) What is your thinnest book/your thickest book?

My thinnest book is probably Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J K Rowling, which is a great book. The thickest book is probably Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, again by J K Rowling. Which is also a fantastic book! 

8) What is a fiction book/what is a non-fiction book?

Fiction: Game by Anders de la Motte

Non-Fiction: Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard 

9) What is a really romantic book/action-based book?

For a really romantic book i'm going to go for one where i think the romance is overly played up in the book, and i think the book would be better without it, so i'm going to go for Geek Girl by Holly Smale because that book would be a whole lot better without the somewhat pathetic "romance". For an action-based book i'm going to go for Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, which is just a great book with loads of action

10) What is a book that made you really happy/one that made you really sad?

For this i'm going to go for two books by the same author, John Green. Will Grayson Will Grayson was a book that made me really happy and, kind of obviously, The Fault in Our Stars made me really sad. 

That was a fun tag, and it was harder than i thought it was going to be!

Meghan x

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Top 5...#7

Hello again internet! I'm back with another one of my favourite posts to write, there's something that i just really enjoy about sitting down and writing a post about my top five somthings. Today i thought i'd talk about a group of books i adore reading, classics!

Here we go!

5: Emma by Jane Austen

I adore everything i have ever read by Jane Austen, and while everyone i speak to says that Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility is their favourite Austen novel, there has just always been something about Emma that makes is my favourite of her works. I love the characters, the plot, everything really. Austen said that when she wrote Emma; "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." And by describing her in the very first sentence as "handsome, clever, and rich" she was probably going to be right. But i love her. Emma is one of my favourite fictional females and i just love everything about this story.

4: Lord of the Flies by William Golding 

I bloody love this book. Everyone i have ever spoke to about this book has told me that they hated it, and i have no idea why. Maybe it's because they had to read it at school and they didn't like the way it was taught? I don't know, but whatever reason they have for hating this book is lost on me because i think it's one of the greatest things i have ever read. Maybe i love it because, along with the next book on the list, it is my mother's favourite book and that love has been passed down? Or maybe it's because it's just a wonderfully written book which i adore so, so, so much.

3: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Ugh this book. This is my mother's favourite book in the world, and i can definitely see why. I love the way this book is written, the characters, the plot, everything really. This book is one of the few books that has made me want to cry, while still loving everything about it. The first time i read To Kill A Mockingbird i honestly thought i was going to hate it, but i loved it so much, and every time i've read it since i've just loved it more and more. 

2: Dracula by Bram Stoker

This book is hands down one of my favourite books in the world. Vampires have always been something i've kind of obsessed over (Mona the Vampire, Buffy, Vampire Diaries, anything i could find with any mention of vampires) and Dracula truly is the reason the term 'the original and the best' exists. Dracula is perfect okay. There is nothing about this book that i can find that i don't love. Everyone knows the story of Dracula, i'm pretty sure there's more adaptations of Dracula than anything else in the world, but if you've never read the book i couldn't recommend it more if i tried! It's just an incredible book.

1: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger

Oh what a surprise, Meghan's put Catcher at the number one spot on a top five! I don't care, it is easily the best book i have ever read in my life and i love it more than anything! Catcher is that book that when you read it you just know that it is going to change your life. I know that seems like such a stupid thing to say but it really did change my life, i first read it at the point in my life where a book really can change everything and mean so much to you that no book could ever compare. I always say that HP changed my life because it made me fall completely in love with reading, but really it was Catcher that made me realise how something as simple as words on a page can make you feel so much and can change your opinions on everything and just ugh i love this book more than i could express in words.

What are your favourite classics?

Meghan x

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Book Haul #2 - Merry Christmas to Me...

As it's Christmas time, i've spent far too much time in bookshops for someone who literally cannot go into a shop with books without buying one. So obviously over the past few weeks i've picked up some books for myself (i've also bought one for basically everyone else in my life) so i thought i'd do a little haul of the books i am really excited about reading!

All American Girl by Meg Cabot - So a few years ago my mum bought me a book called All American Girl: Ready or Not and i absolutely loved it, i thought it was one of the best books i'd read in a long time. After i finished reading it i realised that it was actually a sequel and i've wanted to read the first one ever since, so a few weeks ago i picked it up, and omg am i excited! It's about a girl called Sam who saves the life of the president and then ends up dating his son (i think that's what happens?) all i know is that it's meant to be even better than Ready or Not!!

Wish Upon a Star by Trisha Ashley - I'm not going to lie, i bought this book solely for how pretty the cover is. It screams Christmas and it has glitter on it, glitter!! From what i understand it's about a single mother who is quite content with her life and isn't interested in finding a guy and then her daughter gets pretty sick and she puts all her energy into looking after her while balancing writing recipes (btw that sounds like a great job!) Then she meets a baker called Jago and i'm assuming they fall in love. I think this will just be a nice read over Christmas inbetween reading philosophy books for my essays.

Cold Hands by John J. Niven - Okay i can't actually remember what this one is about. I do remember something basically saying "You think you have the perfect life? New wife, lots of money, attractive son? I'm going to take it all away." or something to that effect...I remember reading the back of the book in about 5 shops before i finally bought it, but i remember it sounding great each time and i can't wait to read it and finally figure out what's going on in the story.

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus - Okay, from what i remember this book is about a guy in a small town in Germany who is accused of killing two girls, one of which was his childhood friend and the other being his very beautiful girlfriend who is known as 'snow white'. He does his time in prison, and when he's released he goes back to his hometown, much to the annoyance of the people who remember what he was accused of. Then another girl in the small town dies and people start accusing him again (i think?) and that's basically all i know...

Game by Anders De La Motte - Okay i know basically nothing about this book. I saw it in Tesco today alongside the second and third books in the trilogy, which i showed restraint and didn't buy, and i thought it sounded really interesting. From what i gather the main guy gets a message inviting him to play a game that leads to all kinds of bad things (i think..?) It looks really interesting, and all the reviews i've read since buying it have all been really good, so i'm going to start reading this alongside my re-read of City of Ashes.

Meghan x 

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Catching Fire: Book to Movie

A few days ago i finally got to see Catching Fire and oh my gosh was it brilliant. 

Now i am a massive fan of The Hunger Games trilogy and i adored the first movie, but i was slightly apprehensive about watching Catching Fire because out of the three books it is by far my favourite and i didn't want the movie to ruin that love for me. I definitely didn't need to worry there! 

A while ago i made this post  about my favourite book to movie adaptations, and now i'm pretty sure that Catching Fire has joined The Deathly Hallows films up there in the top spot. I love the way they made the arena come to life and how they kept so much of the book in the movie. I loved the scenes between Peeta and Katniss, especially the scene on the train where they talk about their favourite colours, it was just perfect. I also loved, loved, loved that the last scene of the movie was exactly how i imagined it going when i read it in the book, and i love that the last line of the movie matched the last line of the book. I even kind of loved Gale in the movie, which i never thought would happen because i basically hate him in the books and i wasn't his biggest fan in the first movie, but for some reason i just loved him this time around! I wanted to give him the biggest hug ever when he was watching Katniss and Peeta kissing, even though i am definitely on the side of "Katniss and Peeta need each other more than any other two people ever." there is no way someone can come out of that movie not seeing how much Gale loves her, more so than in the book.

Can we talk about Finnick for a minute? FINNICK MAN! Oh my gosh could he have been a more perfect Finnick? NOPE. Sam Calfin was by far the best choice they could have made for Finnick. I think he just captured Finnick so damn well! I could have watched a film that was basically 100% Finnick and i would have been happy. 

Basically, i loved this film and i cannot wait to watch it again! I also cannot wait to see what they do with Mockingjay!

Meghan x

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