Last Minute Completion of My 2013 Reading Challenge and New Year’s

Today marks exactly one year from when I first created my blog. It’s been really tough, harder than I thought, to complete a challenge. I just barely finished my 34th book, which helped me complete my lowered challenge goal.

I read these books today: Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Little Known Facts about Well-Known Places: Disneyland, On the Banks of Plum Creek and Performance Success.

 

Darkly Dreaming Dexter review: This was a really interesting read. I found a lot of aspects of Jeff Lindsay’s voice intriguing. His dark humor and use of irony and prolific alliteration.

I found it particularly awesome that Lindsay always talked about the moon whenever Dexter’s “Dark Passenger” was coming or ready for a kill. It matches how other people and Dexter himself refer to his Dark Passenger as a monster. It’s like a reference to werewolf lore as well.

He also made this novel very much within this time period. He referenced many things like The Three Musketeers and Star Wars and all kinds of things like that. He also did a very good job on making this story as within the setting as possible in this way and also by using quite a bit of Spanish since it takes place in Miami.

The book was very suspenseful and riveting. I would recommend it to people who enjoy Philosophy and Mystery/Crime books.

Performance Success review: Really interesting book! He made a subject which may terrify some people very motivating and inspirational. I am looking forward to trying some of his tips as a musician myself. He had some amazing success stories which he used and wrote about very well in order to motivate his readers.

Little Known Facts about Well-Known Places: Disneyland review: Very entertaining book! I often bring this book with me to Disneyland when I’m with my friends because it’s so entertaining and humorous especially for the long waiting lines there. Some facts in this book you will not believe! A very quick read, but is well worth it.

On the Banks of Plum Creek review: I reviewed the second and third books of this series here (https://spectacleaglow.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/a-trip-down-memory-lane-part-1/). I really enjoy this series because it is so different from our lives today with the internet and cell phones, etc. Sometimes I wish life was much more simplified and that we all would just live off of the land. It makes me think about what life was like living on a farm especially since I have family that used to live on a farm. I think living on a farm would have completely changed the perspective of all of us.

For this next year, I want to try again to reach 50 books read. Hopefully during the summer I will be able to read a bit more and hopefully post more as well 😉 Until next time, I wish you all the best and Happy New Year!

 

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

This is the sequel to Divergent, which I reviewed in my last post. If you haven’t read Divergent yet, I would definitely recommend it. If you want to learn more about the series, I would advise you to look at my last post, where I discuss the first book.

This is a continuation where Veronica Roth takes up the story when things get much more complicated within the factions. A war is about to break loose. Conflict between factions heats up and Tris has to deal with the conflict around her and within her. Tris must identify herself as Divergent and fight for what she believes in.

The only thing I didn’t like about Insurgent was the death-seeking phase of Tris. I felt like it went on for much too long and took up a large portion of the book. But, also, I feel like that was intentional. I think Veronica Roth meant to do that and make readers dislike Tris for being so selfish and not so determined to fight back that desire for death. It was also probably used to highlight the guilt and conflict within her.

I’ve got to say, Veronica Roth did a great job on this sequel! I definitely think her second book lived up to the greatness of Divergent. What I loved about Insurgent was that the plot was so driven and I loved having more of the internal conflict where as Divergent didn’t have as much. Both books had a lot of action and physical action, but I liked that the focus of Insurgent was more on the internal conflict and ideological conflict between and within the characters.

Now to wait until October 22 of this year for Allegiant!

Thoughtfully yours,

Spectacles

 

Looking for Alaska by John Green

I was recently introduced to John Green about 2 months ago. I believe I first found him on YouTube through a channel he created with his brother called vlogbrothers. I started watching all of his videos from the beginning and decided to read The Fault in Our Stars. Honestly, that was the best YA reality fiction-type book I have read.

Looking for Alaska was just as good as The Fault in Our Stars! Based on what I’ve heard from my friends and fellow readers, John Green never disappoints. Which is why I plan to read the rest of his books. What I loved about both books I have read so far is that John Green asks the big and important questions. The difficult questions to answer. He doesn’t have his characters talking about the scandal in the shoes that another character wore with polka dots and stripes. He strips away all preconceived notions about what Young Adult Fiction is and replaces it with philosophy, psychology, history and other more sophisticated topics and expects more of the reader and brings the reader to a higher level of thinking.

Not only that, but John Green also writes effectively and impeccably. I can’t believe I didn’t know about his books for so long. Don’t just take my word for it, though! Read it and let me know what you think in the comments below! I’d love to hear your thoughts on it as well!

Thoughtfully yours,

Spectacles

 

First Post

Hello!

I am Spectacles. This is my first post on WordPress. I don’t exactly know how this all works, but bear with me as I get used to this website. This is my first blog.

I plan to write and display various book reviews as I aim to read 100 books (starting with 50, but we’ll see how that goes…) throughout this year. I have been an avid reader in past, however for the last six months or so, I’ve been having trouble continuing reading or finishing a book. I’ve read books from science fiction to fantasy to romance to classics. This post will be the only one until I finish a book and can post my first review.

Thoughtfully,

Spectacles