Top 5 Historical Novels || Top 5 Wednesday

In no particular order...

Top 10 Tuesday | 9 December 2014|

Top 10 New-To-Me Authors | Read in 2014

Ranked in order of how much I loved them....

     10. Erin Eveland

       9. James Dashner

       8. William Ritter

       7. Pauline C. Harris  (Check out her BookTube channel. Just search her name!)

  

       6. Ned Vizzini

       5. Suzanne Young

       

       4. Agatha Christie

       3. Vicky Alvear Shecter (Who I was lucky enough to meet!)

       2. Libba Bray

       1. Rainbow Rowell 

                    –Oswin K. Holmes

Top 5 Wednesday

Top 5 Books I Didn't Expect to Like but Did

In no particular order...

–Oswin K. Holmes

The College Book Tag

Don't worry, it isn't about college textbooks! It is about Young Adult books!

–Oswin K. Holmes

Top 5 Wednesday || Top 5 Female Characters

     I wil leave no explanation. If you have no idea why these are my top 5, you seriously need to read the books they are in.

5. Tris Prior || Divergent

4. Cassiopea Sullivan || The 5th Wave

3. Isabelle Lightwood || The Mortal Instruments

2. Katniss Everdeen || The Hunger Games

1. Hermione Granger || Harry Potter

          –Oswin K. Holmes

Monday Missions #2

     Yes, I do realize that this is Tuesday and that it has been a month since my last Monday Missions, but every time I tried to film a video for it, I kept getting interrupted. So, here is a blog form of what I was hoping to have as a weekly video on my BookTube channel.

     So, what am I planning on doing this week?

     Reading Goals

     I plan on reading two books this week. 

     I have to read Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii by Vicky Alvear Shecter for my high school book club. I am meeting the author on the 16 of October, so it would be lovely if I finished the book this week so that I can meet her and actually have finished her book.

     Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii is about a teenage girl named Lucia with an arranged marriage to a man who is forty years older than her. This man is rich and, well, that's the only upside to the arrangement. She, of course, does not want to marry him, but she wants to explore the world and study natural mysteries, like the tremours that shake Pompeii. Tag is a slave who wants to be a gladiator, and is finally back from Rome and living with his owners again. He and Lucia, who is the daughter of his owner, but not cruel to him like her father, begin to spark a romance. They have to choose between the life that they know and the life that they want to live together.

     Do I even need to put a summary of this up? I'm sure you've all seen it, read it even. I'm just way behind on this book. The movie, as I'm sure you know, came out last week, and I refuse to see it without finishing the book first.

     Basically, this is the story of a boy named Thomas who wakes up with a horrible case of amnesia in a box which takes him up to a place full of boys his age and the place is surrounded by a huge maze. There is no way out, although the Maze Runners run through the maze everyday in search of some way to escape. 

     But what happens when a girl shows up in the maze? She is the first and only girl to ever come out of the box. And she is supposedly the last person who ever will.

     Writing Goals
     I, of course, will do my best to update my Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper fanfiction, The Woman Who Counted, this week. I will also do my best to update my PotterLock/Kid!Lock fanfiction The House Amulets and my Doctor Who PondLife fanfiction, Together Or Not At All.

–Oswin K. Holmes

Looking For Alaska || Book Review

 Looking for Alaska 

by John Green

Overall Goodreads Rating:4.20/5 stars

What I Rated It On Goodreads: 4/5 stars

Rating Based On Percentages: 85%

For Ages: 15+

Warnings: Underage drinking, smoking, porn watching, and oral sex occur. There is also a lot of cursing. If you are offended by any of these, I would strongly suggest that you don't read this book.

Blurb On The Back Of Book: "Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clover, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

     Overall, I did enjoy this book. I read it in two days with about five hours in total of reading it. It's short and it is a quick and easy read. However, this book would not be for everyone. I will just go ahead and warn you all that there is underage drinking, smoking, porn watching, oral sex, and almost sex. I'm not saying it was a full on erotica, because this is definitely a young adult book, but there should definitely be age limits on this. I honestly thing that being 15 and older would be alright, but really, this all depends on the person reading and (if they are a teenager) what their parents think. If you believe you are mature enough for this, then by all means, read it. It is a fun read. I enjoyed it a lot. 

     Basically, this isn't a book talk (I will have a Book Talk video up on my BookTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa_UDBJOmzsgoElQ_V4wphw/videos] soon). This is just me saying that I enjoyed it and me telling you if you would enjoy it by providing warnings and such. I don't want to spoil the book for you, so that is why I am keeping this to a minimum. More to come on my BookTube channel. 
–Oswin H.

Monday Missions #1

What are my reading and writing goals for this week? I discuss them in my first Monday Missions vlog on BookTube!

Watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3slZDXNSvRc&list=UUa_UDBJOmzsgoElQ_V4wphw

New Book Review Soon!

I've just finished The Mortal Instruments: City of Glass by Cassandra Clare, so a review will be up in a few days!
Just thought I should let you know since I haven't been that active recently. My apologies, for that. School has started for me, and I have a lot of homework and marching band and, ugh, why can't school just stop getting in the way of me reading?
–Oswin H.

The Book Adventure Tag

I've done The Book Adventure Tag!

Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_2ax065EBE&list=UUa_UDBJOmzsgoElQ_V4wphw&index=1

The 5th Wave

          The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey is the first alien apocalyptic novel that I've read, and I was not disappointed. 

            The 5th Wave is about a girl named Cassie Sullivan. not Cassie for Cassidy or Cassie for Cassandra, but Cassie for Cassiopeia. After her parents die, and her little brother, Sammy, is taken, she is on her own in the forest with nothing but a few pictures, some food, a backpack, her brother's teddy bear, and the M16 that her father gave her. She is out on a mission to save her brother, but when she is injured she wakes up in the bed of a boy about her age named Evan, who helps her get back on her feet. Will she save her brother?

            This novel has 457 pages (hardback edition). It is separated into XIII (13) parts and 91 short chapters. The writing was spectacular, and the story itself was fast paced and a very enthralling read. The character were well written and like able. The story is told from four points of views. One part is in Sammy's point of view, one is in the viewpoint of the person who injured Cassie, and a majority of the parts are told from the viewpoints of Cassie and a boy from a place called Camp Haven, which I will get to a bit later.

               I found myself on the edge of my seat, flipping pages to the early hours of the morning, just so I could finish this book sooner. It is full of action, amazing characters, and even a bit of romance and sentiment. 

              Basically, the alien apocalypse comes in waves. each wave gets worse and worse, killing more and more people. Now, the fifth wave is being thrown at the world, but nobody knows what it is. It is silent, and some people think there isn't even another wave coming. Have the aliens given up on killing all of the human species? Or are they just taking their time? What is the fifth wave?

              The characters in the book are all asking these questions and are working towards the answers. At Camp Haven, Sargent Parrish, who is the narrator for part of the novel, is told that there will be no fifth wave. It has been months since the fourth wave, so if there was going to be a fifth wave, then it would have happened already. Still, the children of Camp Haven are being prepped and trained for the alien invasion. They are worked as if they are at bootcamp, and they are able to graduate and go into battle at the young age of seven, M16 by his or her side, combat boots strapped and army uniforms present.

              Cassie believes she is the only person left on earth sometimes, and then she finds bodies that are still warm to the touch and she remembers that the idea is nearly impossible. She keeps her M16 loaded and ready to shoot if a drone attacks her, or if so territorial survivors try to get her off their turf. She is alone, until a boy finds her injured and takes her in to help her get better. Together, will they find Cassie's brother, who was loaded on a bus going God knows where? And what kind of relationship will the two teenagers form?

             I highly recommend this book, especially to young adult science fiction fans. It was an amazing book, and I know that I will reread it sometime in the future.

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/12680975/?claim=s26btf4s63c">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

              I had to read A Separate Peace by John Knowles for my summer reading, Sophomore year.

          I quite enjoyed this story, and it had earned a 4 out of 5 star rating on my Goodreads. The characters, well the main characters at least, are quite likable, although I preferred Phineas over the narrator, Gene Forrester. The events of this book were interesting and a bit surprising, seeing as I thought this was going to be a boring book about teenagers goofing around at boarding school in the 1940s. I went into not expecting to like it and finished it quite satisfied.

          I do have one complaint. A huge event happens at the end of the book, and it was not handled well. Knowles did not do a good job of writing it, and the characters emotions and the way they delivered their speech about it was horribly written.

          I do not have much more to say, other than the fact that I recommend it to teenagers and anyone who enjoys reading classics.

          –OH

Find the book on Goodreads: 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5148.A_Separate_Peace?from_search=true