Read and Dream: My Book Life: January 2016

RE-READ Code Name Verity Review

Title: Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Publisher: Egmont Press
Genre: Historical Fiction

Spoilers in white. Highlight to read.

I have two weeks. You'll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That's what you do to enemy agents. It's what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine - and I will do anything, anything to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I'm going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France - an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.

Title: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Author: Mark Twain
Genre: Classics

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley - a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor.

Title: Dumplin'
Author: Julie Murphy
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Genre: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction

Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine—Dumplin’ is guaranteed to steal your heart.

Today is a really special day for me, because my blog has turned two!!!! Yep, on this day two years ago (2014!!) my blog was created with a post that actually consisted of no words but just one picture...

and it still holds true to this day. I am so grateful and amazed by the progress this small blog has made in the past two years. I've met so many amazing bloggers from all over the world and I've come to love the positive energy and radiating love of words that all of us share. It is an incredible bond, and I'm so thankful to be part of it.

Thank you to everyone who stumbled upon my growing blog, and I promise I will continue to make it better :) Much love, and rock on!

The ABBA Book TAG!

I haven't done a TAG in so long...and I'm so so so excited for this one! My dad is an absolute music fanatic, and he gave me a musication (music education) starting with ABBA. I first saw this by Ranu @The Araylia Bookshelf and I went CRAZAYYY! So let's just get into it!

Title: Everything Everything
Author: Nicola Yoon
Genre: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction
Publisher: Delacorte

Spoilers in white...Highlight to read!

My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.

But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.

CLASSICS!

Hey guys! So the other day I was going through my discussion posts to see if I had done this post before...and SHOCKER I hadn't. Which was genuinely surprising because I have quite a lot to say on this topic...and I really want to hear what you guys have to say too.

Title: The Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
Genre: Classics

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

Title: Beauty Queens
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic
Genre: Humor, Contemporary

When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.Written by Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.