Book Blogger Hop (2/4-2/7/11)!

Book Blogger Hop is a weekly meme hosted at Crazy For Books.  Each week, a question is posted for bloggers to answer.  This week's question is:

What are you reading now and why are you reading it?

Well, if I had answered this yesterday, my answer would have been Paranormalcy by Kiersten White.  I won it from Georgia McBride during YA Lit Chat about a month ago and finally got around to starting it this week.  While I normally don't read paranormal, I do try my best to read every book I get.  Well, Paranormalcy was just so good that I finished it yesterday!  (Look for my review coming this week.)


So now I have a couple books waiting to be read, and I'm debating which to read next.  XVI by Julia Carr and The Eagle by Rosemary Sutcliff are up on the list- I bought XVI and received The Eagle from InGroup.  But I also have Dreams of Significant Girls waiting in the post office (can't get packages until Monday...) for an ARC tour, so I might wait until then to pick up a new book.


Until I decide, I'll probably continue reading My Favorite Band Does Not Exist by Robert T Jeschonek, which I got from NetGalley to review, and have downloaded onto my computer.  I just am not a big fan of reading off of my laptop, so I always like to have a "real" book that I'm reading, too.


Whew, that was long!  What are you reading?

Book Blogger Hop (1/28-1/31)!

Book Blogger Hop is a weekly meme hosted at Crazy For Books as a way for bloggers to connect with each other over a common book-related question each weekend.  This week's question was submitted by yours truly =)

What book are you most looking forward to seeing published in 2011?  Why are you anticipating that book?

I submitted a hard question!  There are definitely a lot of books that I'm looking forward to reading in 2011.  But if I have to pick one, I'd have to say Mastiff by Tamora Pierce.  This is the third book in her Beka Cooper series.  Tamora Pierce is one of those authors that I've grown up with.  I started reading her books in middle school (6th or 7th grade) and even though that was over eight years ago (wow!) I still love her books.  Mastiff doesn't come out until November, and there's no synopsis released yet, but I'm sure it will be worth the wait!

Again, a huge thanks to Jennifer at Crazy for Books for featuring Des Absurdités this weekend!!

Book Blogger Hop (1/14-1/17)!

The wonderful blog Crazy For Books has a weekly feature called the Book Blogger Hop.  Each week, they post a question for bloggers to answer.  It's a great way for book bloggers to connect with one another.  This week's question is:

Why do you read the genre that you do?  What draws you to it?

I love reading YA fantasy or dystopian.  Even thinking back to when I was younger, some of my favorite authors to read were  Tamora Pierce, JK Rowling, and Libba Bray; I loved The Giver and The Magician's Nephew; The Guardians of Ga'hoole, Pendragon, and Artemis Fowl were the series I followed.


Now that I'm in college, I still find myself attached to YA fantasy.  While they're quick reads for me now, this genre still pulls me in for all the same reasons it did when I was younger.  I can't find novels in the adult section that I love quite the same way I love my YA.


Everyone always talks about how reading should be an escape.  In order for reading to have that effect on me, I need the story to be very distinct from reality.  I need to be able to pick up a book and have it transport me somewhere that doesn't remind me of the real world.  Being able to use a book as a vessel to imagine something totally new and exciting is something I find only fantasy is able to do for me.  Whether the new world that's created is better or worse than reality right now doesn't matter to me so long that it's different.  I find that YA fantasy and dystopian novels are full of avenues for me as the reader to explore different ideas, without being constrained by the laws of reality.


What's your take on YA fantasy and dystopian novels?  Do you have any all-time favorite books from these genres?

Book Blogger Hop!

The folks over at Crazy for Books have a wonderful feature called the Book Blogger Hop, where people who blog about books answer a question each weekend.  It's a chance for book bloggers to connect with each other.  This week's question is:

What book influenced or changed your life?  How did it influence/change you?

The Giver, which I first read in middle school, has really made an impact on me.  Ever since reading it, I've had a different sense of the future, more questions about what is to come, and (not sure if I'm phrasing this correctly, but) a better understanding of how much speculation there really is in our day to day lives.  I still say that The Giver's impact has been a positive one.  Though I'm sure I understood the book better when I read it more recently than when I first picked it up, it still affects me the same way.  Is that really what the future of our species holds?  Why does every futuristic book portray such a controlled society?  Humans pride themselves on their power of choice; what does such a dystopian view say about us?  If anything, these questions have led me to be more discerning when deciding what to think about things, because any one choice could swing the future in a completely different direction.  It makes me ask more questions about things around me and my own life.  Finding a book such as The Giver at such a young age really changed my way of thinking about everything.


Writing that paragraph was actually a really pensive experience.  I guess in the back of my mind, I knew where certain ideas I have came from, but being able to say exactly what they are attributed to is a completely different experience.  For anyone that hasn't read The Giver- do it!  Even if you're not a fan of dystopian novels, this one goes so much deeper than most.  It was written much earlier than a lot of the other well-known dystopian YA novels, and speculates a lot more as opposed to spelling everything out for the reader.  It's as much a book to read as a book to think about.


*To everyone visiting from the Book Blogger Hop:  I write about pretty much anything on my blog; you'll find book posts mixed in with a lot of other topics.*