Snowflakes and Spider Silk

Title:  A Visit from the Goon Squad Author:  Jennifer Egan Genre: Literary fiction, contemporary My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption. I think the best way to describe this book is one of those color-by-number puzzles with math problems on each spot - you have to solve each math problem before you can color it in, and it's only after you've colored everything in that you know what the final picture is. This book takes fragments from different characters' lives at different time periods and throws them all together. You have everything from journal entries to third perso

Title:  The Moon Dwellers Author:  David Estes Genre: YA, dystopian My rating: 4 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: In a desperate attempt to escape destruction decades earlier, humankind was forced underground, into the depths of the earth, creating a new society called the Tri-Realms. After her parents and sister are abducted by the Enforcers, seventeen-year-old Adele, a member of the middle-class moon dwellers, is unjustly sentenced to life in prison for her parents' crimes of treason. Against all odds, Adele must escape from the Pen and find her family, while being hunted by a deranged, killing machine named Rivet, who works for the President. She is helped by two other inmates, Tawni and Cole, each of whom have dark secrets that are better left undiscovered. Other than her friends, the only thing she has going for her is a wicked roundhouse kick and two fists that have been well-trained for combat by her father. At the other end of the social spectrum is Tristan, the so

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme: Top Ten Things On My Bookish Bucket List Meet an author - any author, really, but I'd be most excited if it were Laini Taylor, Patrick Ness, Markus Zusak, Melina Marchetta, Marissa Meyer, or Brandon Sanderson. I'm going to college in Los Angeles, too, so you would think there would be plenty of authors stopping by - I need to get more on top of finding out about book tours and meeting them! Read 100 books this year - my Goodreads goal is set to 80 right now, because that's a more realistic goal, but 100 is such a beautiful number and fingers crossed that I get there! Read at least 75 of the Time 100 Best Novels of All Time - so far I'm at 17. I have a loooong way to go Host a giveaway - I've had my blog running for a little under a year now, and I've never hosted a giveaway. I'll probably be doing that for my blogversary in a couple of weeks, so look ou

  This is a meme hosted by  Rinn Reads  where anyone can join in and talk about anything Fantasy! It seems like there's been an explosion of Zombie/Vampire/Werewolf/Angel-Demon/Fae fiction recently (especially under the "Paranormal Romance" heading - which in my opinion does not need to exist!). I'm not much a romance reader, and I get so annoyed when protagonists put their love interests before their other obligations (family? friends? saving the world? You know, no big deal). But when there's a great story with a dash of romance on the side, I'm a happy reader. I think in general I enjoy books about the Fae folk more than any other type of paranormal creature. I'm a little tired of the vampire books, and I haven't read many books that involve werewolves. Considering the fact that I don't like gore, I've read a surprisingly large number of zombie books. If I'm going to read a book involving paranormal creatures, I prefer books

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme:   Top Ten Spring TBR books Here's a list of books I want to read in the spring - not necessarily ones that are published in the spring (although some of them are!). Just click on the covers to see their descriptions on Goodreads :) A lot of these are series that I'm really excited to start or books that have been on my TBR forever and I think it's time for some *Spring cleaning*                    

Title:  The Lies of Locke Lamora Author: Scott Lynch Genre: Fantasy, mystery, cons My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: They say that the Thorn of Camorr can beat anyone in a fight. They say he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. They say he's part man, part myth, and mostly street-corner rumor. And they are wrong on every count. Only averagely tall, slender, and god-awful with a sword, Locke Lamora is the fabled Thorn, and the greatest weapons at his disposal are his wit and cunning. He steals from the rich - they're the only ones worth stealing from - but the poor can go steal for themselves. What Locke cons, wheedles and tricks into his possession is strictly for him and his band of fellow con-artists and thieves: the Gentleman Bastards. Together their domain is the city of Camorr. Built of Elderglass by a race no-one remembers, it's a city of shifting revels, filthy canals, baroque palaces and crowded cemeteries. Home to Dons, merchants, soldie

Title:  The Chase Author:  Janet Evanovich Genre: Mystery, thriller, humor My rating: 2.5  of 5 stars Goodreads Summary : Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, New York Times bestselling authors of The Heist, return in this action-packed, exciting adventure featuring master con artist Nicolas Fox and die-hard FBI agent Kate O’Hare. And this time around, things go from hot to nuclear when government secrets are on the line. Internationally renowned thief and con artist Nicolas Fox is famous for running elaborate and daring scams. His greatest con of all: convincing the FBI to team him up with the only person who has ever caught him, and the only woman to ever capture his attention, Special Agent Kate O’Hare. Together they’ll go undercover to swindle and catch the world’s most wanted—and untouchable—criminals. Their newest target is Carter Grove, a former White House chief of staff and the ruthless leader of a private security agency. Grove has stolen a rare Chinese artifact from

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme:   Top Ten All Time Favorite Books in sci-fi/fantasy I guess I'm cheating a little bit because sci-fi and fantasy are technically two genres, but hey, there are a lot of books that don't fit neatly into either category so I'm going to stick with it! If you click on the covers you should be able to get to their goodreads pages. We'll see if my HTML experiments actually work haha  1. Hero of Ages is the third book in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, and it blew my mind! I liked but didn't love the previous two books - some things worked and others didn't. But this book blasted my reservations about this series - it was so intricately plotted, and you found out answers to things that you didn't know could be answered. The mythology and history of the world really came alive in surprising ways, and the characters grew so much. I was literally sitting in