Book Buzz: The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige

Hello again! I'm still alive, and I'm back just in time to get excited about the next book to be released in my infamous list of Elite Favorite book series. While I'm sad to see another month end (I'm super behind on my reading goals), I'm super excited that it also means the release of The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige.

It's the second book in a series, so I'll include the cover and description of the first book in the series, Dorothy Must Die, below.

I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado - taking you with it - you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little bluebirds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still a yellow brick road - but even that's crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy.

They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm - and I'm the other girl from Kansas.

I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.

I've been trained to fight.

And I have a mission. 

This book series has just been killing it so far. I'm obsessed with the setting (Oz is so vividly portrayed, it's like you can taste it), I'm obsessed with the villains, I love Amy Gumm, the protagonist, and I love how there are 3 short novellas, now combined into one handy physical book, that helped me get through the wait for the next book.

I'm also really excited that I'm completely caught up on this series, so I can start reading this book as soon as I get it. Which reminds me that I've forgotten to pre-order it. Whoops, I know what I'm doing tonight.

Happy reading,

Katie

Reading Lightning Round: First and Last

In my entire conception of this project, I often wondered how no one had ever considered doing it before.

Now that the round is over, I know that it was doomed. DOOMED.

I did not reach the 1/2 point on any of the three books I started, though I did determine I very much enjoyed two of them. (I read the first chapter of Maze Runner first, and once I read the first chapters of the other books I felt too disconnected from Maze Runner to go back to it.) Partially this is due to the weekend becoming much more busy than originally anticipated, but the real culprit is the plain and simple fact that I cannot read an entire weekend reading anymore.

For instance, the latest book in the Lunar Chronicles, Fairest, was released yesterday. I had devoured  the first 2 books in the series, Cinder and Scarlet, within two days each. Cress, on the other hand, took me nearly a week. And while I managed to read the 6 books in the Vampire Academy series over the course of 2 weeks last year, that was the only time all year I managed to start and finish a book within a weekend. I had several other reading binges throughout the year, but they all took place over 3-4 days, usually work days instead of on the weekends.

Now that I know the Reading Lightning Round is not going to work in its current format, I'm going to focus on reducing my TBR by reading more (and maybe figure out a better method for the Lightning Rounds).

Reading Lightning Round #1

I have the super unexciting responsibility to watch my sister's dog this weekend. However, this means I  will have a ton of time for reading, which means I'll be doing my first Reading Lightning Round of the year!

To recap, the Reading Lightning Round is basically a read-a-thon where the TBR is set in stone and any books less than halfway read must be given away.

Beginning on Friday evening, January 23, I will read the first chapter of three pre-determined books. I will read as much as I want for the rest of the weekend. I am not obligated to continue reading any of them, so they must compete for my attention. By the time I go to sleep on Sunday, January 25th, the books reaching at least the halfway point are declared the winners and the rest are declared the losers. The winners will be added to my permanent book collection shelf and my list of 2015 reads, and the losers will be added to the donate pile.

This month's theme* is Dystopian Novels. And the contestants are:

1. The Host by Stephanie Meyer
2. The Maze Runner by James Dashner and
3. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

*I won't always do themes, but I want to read dystopians right now, so putting other genres on the list would only set them up for failure.

#0by16

As I said in my last post, there's this new 2015 challenge going around the BookTube community to reduce your personal TBR to 0 by 2016. I'm not going to try to reduce my TBR to 0, but I would like to make a big dent in it. For my purposes, I'm defining my TBR as my owned, unread physical books. This is solely to stop having full shelves (in addition to 1 entire bookshelf) devoted to TBR books. E-books, library books, borrowed books, all of the books I have marked as 'to-read' on GoodReads but do not actually own, do not count against me.

Beginning of 2015: According to my GoodReads account, the number of unread books I own physical copies of is 106 books*. That's more than twice as many books as I read last year, and I'm sure I'll be adding more books as the year goes on. Which is why I've come up with an awesome idea for how decrease my TBR and increase the books I'll read this year (that doesn't involve reading 100+ books in a year).

I'm inventing Reading Lightning Rounds!

Usually, a lightning round is a round in a game where everyone tries to get as many points in a short period of time. This may sound like a read-a-thon, but it's not. In this lightning round, you are the judge, and your books are the contestants that have to battle for a place on your shelf. Any losers must leave immediately. That's right, you have to get rid of them.

Sound crazy? Perhaps. This is not for the weak of heart. This is intended for those people with a shelf full of new releases from the last five years, the people that look over their bookshelves and see a lot more 'meh' than excitement. In particular, this is for people like me that want to at least start the books I've bought over the years before parting with them.

The rules of my Reading Lightning Round are as follows (if anyone else wants to participate, feel free to adjust as needed)

1. Every month, I will designate one weekend to complete a Reading Lightning Round.
2. I will pick 3 books beforehand. No switching books during the round. If I'm not feeling the book, even if I'm just not in the mood for it, it's out.
3. I will read the first chapter of each book. 
4. If I manage to reach the halfway point of the book (and still want to read more) before the end of the weekend, the book gets to stay. 
5. If I do not manage to reach the halfway point of the book, it must go.
6. There is no quota for winners or losers. All three books can win (though unlikely I'll be able to read that much in a weekend), and all three books can lose.

*Edit: My Goodreads account wasn't updated. I only have 79 unread books on my shelves. Still a lot, but quite a bit less than I thought. And a Reading Lightning Round should take care 36 books this year, which is almost half of the TBR.

New Year, New Blog

One thing I failed to mention in my 2014 review post was my blogging. To sum up, it was terrible. I completely fell off the wagon, time and time again. But I did learn a lot of things about myself as a blogger, and what I want for this blog.

• 3 posts a week is way too much for me.
• I don't want to be a big-time book blogger. I want to geek out about the books I want, without keeping to a super demanding schedule and feeling constricted by rigid expectations. 

So, now that I've taken potential fame and notoriety off the table (haha like that was actually going to happen), I can focus more on having fun with this blog. I'm going to aim for 1 post a week about whatever I want, without designating certain topics on different days.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am participating in the GoodRead's Annual Reading Challenge again (aiming for 50 again), but that's not the only challenge I will be doing. There are several read-a-thons that are going on, and I plan to participate in one of them this year (IDK which one yet, I'll update you as soon as I know). There is also a challenge to reduce your TBR by 2016, known as #0by16. I won't be sticking too strictly to that one, but you can expect a another post in the near future to discuss my plans to reduce my TBR list.

Happy 2015! Here's to a great year!

2014 Reading Recap

Let me start by recapping the last few years of my reading, in particular the years after I joined GoodReads and started actually trying to increase the number of books I read and tracking what I've read. The 50 books in a year sounded too daunting, so I went with a more reasonable number of30 books for 2012 instead.

I failed with 27 books.

Not quite defeated by this, I attempted to read 30 books again in 2013.

That time, I failed with 26 books, despite the fact I'd included several short stories that had been published as a singular entities as opposed to part of short story collections.

So last year, I originally though I would stop setting myself up for failure and challenge myself to 25 books instead. I had managed that in the past 2 years, I figured I might as well succeed this year. But I also had the urge to throw caution to the wind and just go for the 50 books challenge I had first heard about. 50 books seemed much more plausible now, especially since the new crazy goal on BookTube was 100 books in a year.  But it wasn't until the end of February, when I read a 6-book series within 2 weeks, that I really decided to commit to read 50 books in 2014.

It should surprise no one that I failed to read 50 books in 2014. Maybe one day I'll meet my reading goals, but it has yet to happen.

However, I failed with 48 books.

Guys.

48 BOOKS.

That's 21 books more than I've managed to read in the past 2 years!

I'd also like to do a quick recap of my reading habits in 2014. I've started buying and reading a lot more books on my Kindle. (Actually I use the Kindle app on my phone in order to read during my lunch break)

I did a lot more impulse book buying based on Amazon Daily Deals and Epic Reads Epic Deals, which is part of the reason I felt somewhat unsatisfied by what I read last year. When I looked over my ratings, there are a lot of 4-5 stars, so I can't say I didn't like most of the books I read. But part of the attempt to read so many books in one year did have me gravitating towards quicker reads, and I feel like by reading more books, I ended up with a larger percentage of books that were ok, as opposed to books I loved or hated. I put in my breakdown of the past 3 years below (cause I'm a nerd).

2012: 4-5 stars: 19 (70%); 3 stars: 4 (15%); 2 stars: 4 (15%);
2013: 4-5 stars: 17 (65%); 3 stars: 5 (19%); 2 stars: 4 (15%);
2014: 4-5 stars: 33 (69%); 3 stars: 12 (25%); 2 stars: 3 (6%);

In case you're interested, all the books I read in 2014 are listed beneath the cut, and the separate page with my running list will by updated to reflect 2015's books.

NaNoWriMo 2014

You may have noticed I've abandoned the blog again. The "3 posts per week" schedule has proven to be too taxing on me, and now that I am participating in NaNoWriMo, I have put all non-noveling hobbies on the back burner. But, I will be back in December, with an updated posting schedule.

Have a great November!

Happy reading (and writing!),

Katie