Hop and Follow

"What book-to-movie adaption have you most liked? Which have you disliked?"

My favorite is: Gone with the wind

My not so much favorite is: The Shinning

How many books do you read in a week? And in what format do you read them, or listen to them?

I read two books at the moment (it's the busy year of teaching - summer here I come - books ga-lore!) I always read them.

Everlost by Neal Shusterman

Nick and Allie don’t survive the car accident…but their souls don’t exactly get where they’re supposed to go either. Instead, they’re caught halfway between life and death, in a sort of limbo known as Everlost: a shadow of the living world, filled with all the things and places that no longer exist. It’s a magical, yet dangerous place where bands of lost children run wild and anyone who stands in the same place too long sinks to the center of the Earth.

When they find Mary, the self-proclaimed queen of lost kids, Nick feels like he’s found a home, but Allie isn’t satisfied spending eternity between worlds. Against all warnings, Allie begins learning the “Criminal Art” of haunting, and ventures into dangerous territory, where a monster called the McGill threatens all the souls of Everlost.

In this imaginative novel, Neal Shusterman explores questions of life, death, and what just might lie in between.


i was having this discussion with Karen, who I work AND blog with, that Shusterman's novels take me about thirty pages before I'm "hooked". Karen thinks he grabs the reader right away. Does anyone have any feelings on Shusterman's writing style?

Anyway, my review, Nick and Allie are killed in the same car accident, and when they "wake up" nine months later, there is Lief, this strange, alone, little boy who has been in Everlost for a very long time. Lief wants to stay - Nick and Allie want to go home. But when ever they stay in certain spots to long, they sink - but they don't know where they are sinking to.

Eventually they meet Mary. Nick "likes" her. Allie does not like her. And something is off about this commune (lack of a better world). The kids don't act like living kids and Allie is suspicious. Allie gets the boys in trouble by the Haunter and the McGill (WHO I LOVE HIS STORY) get his hands a few of our leads and then comes the rescuing part.

It's a great world and I am going to start Everwild as soon as I finish The Summoning. Allie is a great protagonist that doesn't follow the rules because she should. She is too quick with her actions and finds herself in trouble. It's why Nick is a great coutnerpart for her. He thinks things through - mostly. Lief is this little (old?) boy who goes through so many changes in the book. At first he's kind of a brat and selfish, then he wants to be like everyone else and gets sucked into videogames, and then he reaches a state of nirvana.

Skinjacking is a skill only Allie (so far) can do which I think is going to make her the "it" thing in Everlost in the upcoming books.

Some quick thoughts:
Two love stories - one is already broken and I love it.
Shusterman did a great job tying his characters together and making them impact one another
There is rumor of a Shusterman movie - AWESOME
In the book it takes nine months to be born and nine months to die
There are dead spots in the world -including the twin towers - great way to remind teens about the past
Nick has chocolate permanently smeared across his face :)

Teaser Tuesday!

I'm back - had a problem with logging on to blogger.

Teaser Tuesday

is a weekly event

Sponsored by MizB of Should be Reading

Here's how it works:

Grab the book you are currently reading (anything at all)

Open the book to any random page.

Share 2 teaser sentences from anywhere on the page

Please Make Sure They Are Not Spoilers!

(Don't Give Too Much Away)

Just enough to pique our interests

This week is The Summoning

"How many kids had heard me screaming? Peeked in that classroom while I'd been fighting the teachers and babbling about being chased by melted custodians. Seen me being taken away strapped to a stretcher."

Hop and Follow

This weeks question is:

"If you were given the chance to spend one day in a fictional world (from a book), which book would it be from and what would that place be?"

Three come to mind but they are all world that are in shambles or dangerous. But if I had to pick one, it would be the Infernal Devices world - because I love the time period and Im a paranormal junkie. I would also be a shadow hunter. :)

Q. It's circle time. Time for us to open up and share. Can you tell us FIVE quirky habits or things about you? We all have them..
Only five? hahaha.1. I can only write in black pens2. Deathly afraid of frogs3. Cannot focus if my office is clean - most people need it clean 4. I judge people based on their bathrooms 5. i have a designated happy dance for really great moments in life.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday


is a weekly event
Sponsored by MizB of Should be Reading


Here's how it works:
Grab the book you are currently reading (anything at all)
Open the book to any random page.
Share 2 teaser sentences from anywhere on the page
Please Make Sure They Are Not Spoilers!
(Don't Give Too Much Away)
Just enough to pique our interests

This week comes from Everlost by Neal Shusterman

"Think of it this way," he said. "It took nine months to get you born, so doesn't it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?"

I am now a huge fan of Neal Shusterman. His books are going to appear more on my blog.

ROW80 and Clockwork Angel giveaway

I had an OK week this week - I missed Wednesday - I was out all day for softball and teaching.

So for this week:

Sequel - 2,500 words

New WIP - 300 :(

Totals for the whole time:

Sequel are: 5,500

New WIP: 4,125

I'm not as far a long as I had hoped to be at this point. My job (though I love teaching) is time consuming. I keep telling myself that when it is summer vacation I will do more writing and make that "my job" for the summer.

Recently, a friend of mine on blogger, Kamol and I paired up and have become a support team for writing. I sent her my relatively polished manuscript and she is giving me feedback. We talk about our struggles, we encourage, we share knowledge and we try to relieve the pressure that we feel. I look forward to her email and appreciate the fact someone else knows how I am feeling. Do you have a group? a friend? or are you a lone wolf in the writing industry and why?

Also, I wanted to spread the word about a contest at Deranged Book Lovers. They are on their 6 month anniversary and are giving away a copy of Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. Become a follower and support this awesome book blogging team!

Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

I absolutely love this cover...

This debut, the first novel in a trilogy, is achingly romantic, terrifying, and filled with blistering action.

When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers - monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell - she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between archangels and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.

A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of wielding swords of angelfire to fight the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie's powers have been awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her - an assassin who has already killed her once.

While balancing her dwindling social life and reaper-hunting duties, she and Will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plansto use this weapon to ignite the End of Days and to destroy Ellie's soul, ending her rebirth cycle forever. Now, she must face an army of Bastian's most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets of her past lives - including truths that may be too frightening to remember

Overall, I thought it was good. I was at no point enthralled by this book. It is very slow in the beginning, leaving huge concepts not described to the reader, so I felt like I didn't know what was going on. It picked up in the middle but plateaued for me until the end. I thought the concept of Ellie being this immortal, bad-ass, demon fighting teen was great - I love love stories but I love bad ass heroines.

I was intrigued by the building tension between Will and Ellie. He's all stoic and trying to stay duty bound and then there is Ellie, tempting him and I LOVE THEIR FIRST KISS. I'm hoping that in the second one, we discover more about Will (Nathaniel and Caden too) because they don't seem real to me yet.

I may be crazy when it comes to fight scenes, but when your story is about one girl, obviously Ellie in this case, and she is in a ton of battles, there is no suspense for me because she is the main character, the author isn't going to kill her off in Chapter 7. I didn't feel there was an element of: "OMG I hope she makes it!" I get why the scenes were in there though - the author had to develop that she was getting her skills back and becoming bad-ass, but I felt I could skim those pages.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the culture and background of the story...If it's true, this author did a ton of pre-leg work for the book!!!!

One quick thought:

Ellie's dad -something is way up with him besides a mean streak