2015 Reading Challenges

I like reading challenges, they sometimes help me pick what I want to read when I'm overwhelmed  and they push me t times to read things that are outside my comfort zone. So here is a list of the challenges I'm doing this year:

          2015 TBR Pile Reading Challenge!

This challenge is hosted by the lovely ladies from Bookish. I did this one last year and I did complete it, the thing is I forgot to post about it, let's hope I won't forget this time.

If you're new to the TBR Pile Reading Challenge, here is the deal: We all have those books. We buy them, win them, they're gifted to us. Then we put them up on a bookshelf and there they stay, collecting dust, waiting for the time when we'll finally decide to pick them up.

Join us on a quest to dust off your TBR Pile and read all the books you've been telling yourself you'll read next time you'll get a chance. This is your chance!

Since I'm also using this challenge as a motivator to write reviews my level will be  A Firm Handshake, this means I'll try to read and review 1-10 books.

2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge 

I've been doing this challenge since 2012 and have been fortunate enough to complete it all three years; my favorite thing about this one is that you get told if you are on schedule or if you are falling behind. Like in the previous years my goal will be to read 100 books but it can go up if I have the right pace and motivation.

2015 A-Z Reading Challenge

For this Challenge I have to Either the first word in the title of the books or the author’s name (first or last) should correspond with a letter in the alphabet.

-You should omit “a” and “the” in the titles.

-Letters Q, X and Z can be positioned anywhere in the titles or author names.

*All the challenges listed above are lasting the entire year, I have plans to participate in other challenges that last a little less*

First Post of 2015!

Super quick post to wish everyone a happy 2015 and I hope it's an amazing year.

I'm Taking A Small Hiatus

Hello everyone, with the Holidays and my trip to Pittsburgh (I have a firm no internet rule while I'm on vacation)  approaching  I won't have time to post anything so I'm taking  a break from Blogging, I'll try to be back on the first week of January

Merry Christmas!

Waiting on Wednesday (56)

Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pick this week is:

In this exhilarating one-hundred-page companion novella to the New York Times bestselling I Am Number Four series, Mark James is on the run—and on the wrong side of the law—but he'll do whatever it takes to save Sarah Hart and help the Garde.

A sequel to I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Return to Paradise, this novella picks up with Mark racing to Dulce, New Mexico, evading capture from both the Mogadorians and the FBI. On the road, his mysterious new ally—a fellow blogger from They Walk Among Us who Mark knows only by the screen name GUARD—sends him a care package to help in his quest to find Sarah. Inside is a stack of cash, high-tech equipment, and some seriously advanced weaponry, all begging Mark to once again ask the question: Just who exactly is this guy? As Mark gets closer to tracking down Sarah, he also gets closer to discovering the identity of this enigmatic figure who seems to know so much about the Loric. When the truth about GUARD is finally revealed, nothing will ever be the same.

I have mixed feelings about the main I am Number Four series but I really like reading the Novellas, I can't wait to read the new one.

Top Ten Tuesday (47)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and The Bookish.  Each week a new top ten list is posted, and to participate all you have to do is fill in YOUR top ten for the list.

This week is Top Ten Books I read In 2014

2014 was a a disappointing year for me reading wise, I liked a some books but I wasn't crazy about any of them. Here are the ones the best ones:

Monday Book Recommendations (21)

Monday is the day I choose what new books I’m going to start reading but I have so many books in my To Read Pile that sometimes it’s hard to choose so I have decided that on Monday mornings I’ll recommend some  of  my favorite books.

Life is bleak but uncomplicated for sixteen-year-old Tess, living in a not-too-distant future where the government, faced with humanity's extinction, created the Chosen Ones, artificial beings who are extraordinarily beautiful, unbelievably strong, and unabashedly deadly. 

When Tess begins work at Templeton, a Chosen Ones training facility, she meets James, and the attraction is immediate in its intensity, overwhelming in its danger. But there is more to Templeton than Tess ever knew. Can she stand against her oppressors, even if it means giving up the only happiness in her life?

 

   

     

Tess is finally safe from the reach of the Council, now that she is living in the Middlelands with the rebel Isolationists. With James having returned to Templeton, she easily falls back into her friendship with Henry, though her newfound knowledge of Robert’s chosen one status still stings. Even surrounded by people, Tess has never felt more alone. So she’s thrilled when James returns to the settlement, demanding to see Tess — until she finds out that it’s because her sister, Louisa, has been recruited into Tess’s old position at Templeton, and that the dangerously sadistic chosen one George has taken an interest in her.

 

   

     

    

The dramatic conclusion to the Lost Souls trilogy, which answers readers’ questions and finally pits natural Tess against the true enemies of Templeton, the creators

Heartbroken but more determined than ever after a tense showdown in the woods, sixteen-year-old Tess once again returns to the safety of her community of Isolationists. Bolstered by new alliances and desperate to protect those she loves, this time she knows she can return stronger and more powerful than ever to take back what is hers. As she trains in combat and grows more confident, Tess receives beautiful letters penned by her forbidden love, the chosen one James, from his prison in Templeton. He is now serving as a bodyguard to the creators-the team of scientists who created artificial life in the first place. And what he has discovered about the true origin of the illness that halted natural life could change everything. Enemy will become ally and death will bring new hope in this stunning conclusion to Tiffany Truitt's epic Lost Souls trilogy.

This series is one of my favorites and it certainly deserves more love and praise

The Forgotten by Saruuh Kelsey Mini Review

The Forgotten 

The Lux Guardians #1

by Saruuh Kelsey                                                                 Kindle Edition                                                                 Published June 20th 2013

Good and goodness will prevail. 

Honour and Horatia Frie are twins living in a world of wreck and ruin. 

Forgotten London is a dismal place of containment, rationing, and a four-family-per-house regulation. Twenty five years ago the world was set ablaze when solar flares obliterated three quarters of the Earth’s population and wiped out whole continents in one blow. The flares brought with them The Sixteen Strains: agonizing and fatal diseases that plague each of the forty one zones of Forgotten London and the rest of the world. The only places that escaped fatal damage were two countries now known as The Cities – States and Bharat. The rest of the world – The Forgotten Lands – is contained within borders for the people’s protection against even deadlier Strains outside the barrier. But fifteen year old Honour thinks differently. He thinks that they’re kept inside the fence for other, more menacing reasons. He thinks that States are planning to kill them. 

Branwell and Bennet Ravel are twins living in a world of danger and secrecy. 

In Victorian London, years before the solar flares hit, the Ravels’ world has just been turned upside down. Their father, poisoned by something even genius Branwell can’t determine, has passed away. His dying words were unnerving orders to keep each other safe no matter the cost, and to hide everything he has ever invented. When one of his creations goes missing – a device named The Lux that can generate unlimited energy – the twins are shocked to discover that their very own government has stolen it and, according to their father’s journals, are planning to use it to create unfathomable explosions to destroy their world.

Great World building and concept but all the different points of view made it a very hard and confusing read.