Bloodlines Cover!

So I still haven't gotten to read Last Sacrifice (next on my reading list, though, finally! *squeak*), but I adore the Vampire Academy series, so naturally I'm beyond excited about the spinoff series, Bloodlines. And now we have a cover for the first book in that series, also titled Bloodlines:

It's way different from the VA covers (which is probably good), and I'm still not quite sure what I think of it. But I so want to read this book. What do you guys think?

A Note and a Poem

Hey everyone! Sorry I never got a post up on Saturday, I was going to do a Books from Before and then stuff came up and it didn't happen. I'll have one next week, promise!

So who watched the Superbowl last night? (I didn't. I saw some of the commercials, but I deliberately avoided watching the actual game. I'm not a fan of football, even though most of my family is.) I will say I thought the Volkswagen commercial with the Darth Vader kid was kind of adorable, and some of the others were great too. As for football...well, congratulations to the winners! I know my family is quite pleased that the Packers won and some of my friends are not... Anyway, congrats to both teams on what I assume was a game well played and on making it to the Superbowl, and good job to the Packers for their victory!

I haven't gotten a whole lot of reading done lately, but I did find a poem that I really like, and I wanted to share it with all of you. It's called "Harlem," and it's by Langston Hughes:

Harlem

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

Past Midnight by Mara Purnhagen

Title: Past Midnight
Author: Mara Purnhagen
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 216
Series: Past Midnight #1
Description from Goodreads:
Let me set the record straight. My name is Charlotte Silver and I'm not one of those paranormal-obsessed freaks you see on TV…no, those would be my parents, who have their own ghost-hunting reality show. And while I'm usually roped into the behind-the-scenes work, it turns out that I haven't gone unnoticed. Something happened on my parents' research trip in Charleston—and now I'm being stalked by some truly frightening other beings. Trying to fit into a new school and keeping my parents' creepy occupation a secret from my friends—and potential boyfriends—is hard enough without having angry spirits whispering in my ear. All I ever wanted was to be normal, but with ghosts of my past and present colliding, now I just want to make it out of high school alive….

*********

I love when I find a book that completely exceeds my expectations. I thought Past Midnight was going to be good -- certainly not bad, but ghost stories are often hit-or-miss with me, and I thought "good" was as good as it was going to get. But...I was wrong. And in times like these, I love being wrong.

Charlotte's parents are professional ghost-story debunkers. They believe in residual energy, nothing more. They never live in one place for very long, always on the move to debunk more ghost stories. So when they settle in South Carolina with the intent to stay there long-term, Charlotte is thrilled. Until a pair of ghosts turns up in her bedroom...and her new friends turn out to have ghosts of their own.

I loved the friendships between Charlotte and the cheerleaders and Charlotte and Noah. As much as I love romances, I loved that this wasn't a romance. I loved that college was mentioned - it's realistic. I can attest to the fact that high school seniors spend a lot of time thinking about college, so that was a nice touch. And I loved that I didn't solve the mystery before the end of the book - it kept me reading to find out what was going to happen next. Mostly, I just really liked Charlotte as a narrator, too. And, okay, I've read books set in Charleston where you can tell the author has never actually been there, but Mara Purnhagen got it right. So the book gets bonus points for that too. :)

Past Midnight hasn't earned a place on my all-time-favorites, read-them-over-and-over list...but it was definitely an awesome, fun read (and pretty short, too, if you don't want something long). It gets the thumbs-up from me! Check it out if you get the chance.

Oh, and before I go: is this cover gorgeous or what? I'm not sure what about it appeals to me so much, but I love it. It's awesome.

TWO Cover Reveals!

Yesterday, Ally Carter revealed the cover for her next book, Uncommon Criminals, the sequel to Heist Society. I really enjoyed Heist Society so I can't wait to read this one! Without further ado, here's the cover:

You can see the original post at Ally's website, here. What do you think? I love the blue and purple!

AND, if that's not enough... Lesley Livingston just released the cover of her upcoming book Once Every Never. I read and adored Wondrous Strange and Darklight, and although I haven't had access to a copy of Tempestuous yet, I can't wait to read it, so I'm really excited for Once Every Never. And I think this cover is gorgeous. Here it is:

Again, the full blog post is on Lesley's blog, here. What do you guys think?

Musings on the Whole Twilight Thing...

Yes, I'm opening that can of worms. Sort of.

I know a lot of people despise Twilight -- absolutely despise it. I know a lot of people love Twilight, as in, absolutely freaking adore it. I'm in the middle. There are a lot of things that I really don't like about those books. I don't like the way creeper-ness has become synonymous with love ("I like to watch you sleep, every night, by climbing in your window without telling you" is NOT romantic. "You're cute when you're asleep" might be, but the creeper one is not, nor will it ever be) because of Edward Cullen. I don't like the implication that you can never find true happiness without a romantic partner. I really, really hate the idea that it is in any way okay for a boy to tell a girl that she is his only reason for living and that without her, he would kill himself.

BUT...there are also good things about it, primarily this: even though the writing isn't always perfect and there are certain messages that I object to, I can read the books and enjoy them for what they are -- simple, fun stories that are meant to take us away from the realities of day-to-day life for a couple of hours. And in my book (pun intended), anything that can inspire so many teenagers to read is a good thing.

I think it's fine to be a Twilight fan. For a long time, I was a big fan -- and then some stuff happened in my personal life that rather shifted my perspective on a lot of it. Now...I'm sort of in between, I guess. But I don't mind Twilight as a series or a franchise or whatever. No, my two big problems with Twilight have nothing to do with the actual Twilight books:

1. "The next Twilight" is a phrase that I am absolutely sick of hearing. Next time there's a series as popular as Twilight,we'll know it for what is is. Then it'll be "the new XYZ Series," etc. Great books stand on their own. I'm sick of comparing them to Twilight. (This also holds true for Harry Potter, and anyone who's spent five minutes around me in real life will know that I'm a total Harry Potter nerd. This isn't anti-Twilight so much as anti-comparison, but Twilight is the one we hear all the time now.)

2. Twilight copycats. They remade the covers of Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet to look more like the Twilight covers! (I blogged about that a long time ago, actually.) That did not make me happy. And I'm not happy with what vampires have become in the YA Lit world. I like vampires. I don't know why we decided that they should all sparkle just because the Cullens did. I miss evil vampires. But the other thing is that I don't like the automatic associations of everything to Twilight -- "oh, it has vampires AND werewolves in it, and there's a vampire named Victoria and a character named Riley? It's totally a Twilight knockoff." No, no it's not. Unraveled may have taken me a while to get into, but it was still a good book and it was nothing like Twilight. The world is not divided into Twilight-knockoffs and books with no vampires, werewolves, Victorias, Rileys, Edwards, Bellas, Alices, creepers, or anything else that ever appeared in Twilight.

And that got a little bit rantier than I meant for it to. My sincerest apologies. But now that I've said all that... where do you guys fall on this issue?

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Title: Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Publisher: Harper Teen
Series: Delirium #1
Pages: 440
Description from Goodreads: 
Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love - the deliria - blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.
*******

I've gotten slightly behind the times. I wanted to post this yesterday when it came out, but then I was still sick on Monday so yesterday's post ended up being the one I wanted to write Monday about a few minor changes... BUT ANYWAY.

This book. Oh my goodness. Once I started, I couldn't stop reading. I loved it. I really, really did.

In a lot of ways, Delirium is what you'd expect from a dystopian novel. I feel like if Matched and Birthmarked had a child, it would almost-not-quite be this. But I don't mean that in a bad way -- there are certain things that all dystopians have, just as trademarks of the genre, and for what it's worth, I thought Delirium did it very well. Despite the fact that it reminded me of both of those other novels, it is definitely a story all its own.

Lena is seventeen. In ninety-five days, when she turns eighteen, she will get the cure -- the cure for the amor deliria nervosa. Love, the disease that kills you when you have it and when you don't. But then she meets Alex, and everything changes. She's been infected, badly infected, but she's happy that way.

I loved the characters. Lena, Alex, Hana... I want to be their friend. I loved the little things that made them human. Yes, Lena is scared of rebelling. Her fear makes her real, and her courage makes her a heroine worth reading about. I love the development of the relationship between Lena and Alex. I love the friendship dynamic between Lena and Hana. I loved the history, too. The clips from The Book of Shhh at every chapter, the story of how society came to be the way it is, and the personal history, too -- the story of Lena's family. So much awesome packed into 440 pages.

The story kept me turning pages to see what would happen next. And by the end, I knew what was going to happen -- I had figured it out, but I had to keep turning pages because I had to know for sure if I was right. Obviously I'm not going to tell you what that ending was, because that would be terribly spoilery of me, but I will say that I was right. But the fact that I could figure out the end, that it wasn't entirely unpredictable, didn't lessen the story at all. In fact, I think maybe the [insert non-spoilery word here, because all the ones I can think of are spoilery] of the ending just made me love it even more.

I'm going to stop talking now, because I feel like I'm going to say something spoilery by accident if I don't. So I will leave you with three things: 1. Delirium made me go read some poetry. (I love when books give me good poetry to look up.) 2. I want Pandemonium nowww.... And 3. Go read this book right now. Please and thank you. :)

Back, with Updates!

Hi, guys! I'm back now. Turned out I needed a little more time off than I thought I did, but it paid off because I'm feeling much better now. Still sneezing more than I like, but getting better, which is good. I hope nobody else comes down with what I had(/maybe still have, a little), because it is no fun at all.

Anyway, enough about that. I also wanted to tell you about a couple of changes I'll be making on the blog. Nothing big or dramatic, just some little things, but I think they're important.

1. No more numbers. I hate trying to assign numerical values to books. From now on, my reviews will not have "4/5" or "5/5" or "3/5" or any of those things. I'll still fill in stars on Goodreads, I'm sure, but I'm not going to be putting numbers in my reviews. I feel like they're really superficial anyway - two books might both fall in the 4/5 category for me but I could feel completely different about the books. After nearly seven months of trying to conform to what seems to be the predominant system among book bloggers and slowly realizing how much I dislike it, I've decided to stop. No more numbers!

2. What I post is what I want to post. I started out with this goal in mind anyway. I love reading and I love talking about what I read, so I was going to use my blog as an outlet to share the books I like with other people. As I explored the YA-book-blogosphere, I sort of let the trends affect what I posted. I thought it was my job to review everything I read, good or bad, assign ratings, talk about the books professionally. I still want to be honest and professional about what I read, but blogging isn't my job. It's supposed to be something I do for fun -- my way to talk about the books I love. So if I don't like a book, I probably won't post about it. And if I really like a book, I may gush a bit. I want you, my awesome readers, to find out about good books from this -- but it has to be something that I do for me, first.

I'll still be adding the books I talk about to my list of reviews. The way I do these reviews will just change a little. Hope you guys will still enjoy! And as always, thanks for reading. ♥