Snowflakes and Spider Silk

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme:  Top Ten Halloween Books for the Faint of Heart I'm a really big scaredy-cat when it comes to horror. I get disturbed really easily and  I don't like reading books that are dark without any light-hearted parts or nice warm-fuzzies to balance them out. So here's a few creepy/Halloween-themed books that I liked and didn't freak me out too much!   This book is full of ghouls and ghosts and other things that stalk the night, but it's actually a really endearing coming of age story :)   This book terrified me when our 3rd grade teacher read it to us in class, but I loved it anyway. It's sinister and creepy without being gory or over-the-top.   I liked The Diviners better than Lair of Dreams, but this one is still a lot of fun and features ghosts and a lot of mysterious happenings.   This book isn't technically Halloween bu

Title:  Made to Kill Author:  Adam Christopher Genre: Science fiction, Mystery, Historical Fiction My rating: 3 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: In an alternate version of 1960s Los Angeles, the world’s only robot detective has been turned into a hit man by his corrupted master computer. Ray is good at the job, too—not only does nobody suspect the world’s last robot is a hit man, his fame allows the Electromatic Detective Agency to continue as the perfect front, and with a twenty-four-hour memory limit, he sure can keep a secret. When a woman arrives at the agency wanting to hire Ray to investigate the brutal murder of a priest, his attempts to dissuade her are overruled when she produces a lucrative advance payment. Profit is profit, and Ray accepts the job, even though the woman demands total anonymity. She tells them not to try to reach her—she’ll call when the time is right—and she vanishes into the city. Ray’s investigation leads him into a dark world of Hollywood intrigue,

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme:  Top Ten Wishes for the Book Genie This is so easy! I have so many book wishes haha Finally go to a Sanderson signing This almost happened this month during the Shadows of Self Tour, but life happened and I didn't get to go to the SoCal signing/my mom couldn't make it to the Bay area one  :( IT'S OKAY ONE DAY I WILL ACTUALLY GET TO MEET ONE OF MY FAVORITE AUTHORS AND IT WILL BE AWESOME. Another thing I was really looking forward to but fell through this year: ALA was in SAN FRANCISCO and I was really excited because it's so close to home and for once I wasn't in school so I could definitely go... but life happened and my family was across the country during ALA. Book Genie, please get me to a book conference sometime soon? This one is an impossible wish, but please make more time in the day so I can read ALL THE BOOKS? And another impossible wish: Please

Title:  A Discovery of Witches Author:  Deborah Harkness Genre: literary fiction, urban fantasy My rating: 4 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell. Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their al

Title:  Illuminae Author:  Amie Kaufman , Jay Kristoff Genre: Science fiction, young adult My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded. The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit. But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only

Here's my stop on the BFF Blog hop, hosted by Swoony Boys Podcast and Fiction Fare ! Also posting today are The Novel Orange , Don't Fold the Page , The Reader and the Chef  so be sure to check them out! I thought this would be a fun way to get to know other book bloggers and spread the love, and hunting for awesome bookstagrammers was a lot of fun. Most of them are twitter friends who also have bookstagrams, but I found a few new ones tooHere are a few awesome ones I found: A photo posted by Isabella Davila (@bookishbookblog) on Sep 27, 2015 at 2:35pm PDT This one was new to me, but I loved all the trinkets and color coordination that goes into featuring different books! A photo posted by Alison ❁ 19 (@crimeofrhyme) on Oct 3, 2015 at 8:50am PDT I found this one while I was hunting for new bookstagrammers, and I just can't wrap my head around how gorgeous all of these photos are. Just wow. A photo posted by Brittany S.

I know it's only October, and I've got a good 3 months more to read all sorts of fantastic books, but I'm really excited about some of these and I just can't wait until December to tell you all to read them! Here are some of my favorite reads (some ARCs, some not) from this year. Fantasy Uprooted is one of those books that is really slow and you don't realize how much you're falling for it until you're halfway through and you realize you just can't put it down. It's lyrical and beautiful, but it also has one of the most unconventional fantasy protagonists I've ever written. Agnieszka is an unapologetic klutz and actually pretty terrible about learning how to control her magical powers, but she's also fiercely loyal and headstrong and brave. The setting is such a big part of this story, which I loved. No surprises here! I cannot believe how much this series has changed from book 1 to book 4. I really disliked the fir

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme:  Top Ten Bookish Tropes I'm Quitting Here are a list of phrases and tropes that tick me off when I see them. I started out with contemporary/YA tropes and then moved on to SF/Fantasy tropes, so they're a little random...I couldn't think of 10, but here are a bunch of tropes that I'm really tired of! "But she wasn't like the other  girls" This one is inspired by my current read. I'm so sick of the main character of books being "special" and "not like the other  girls". It's subtle girl hate, and it's so annoying! Must every main character be some sort of Chosen One ? "S/he let out a breath s/he didn't know s/he was holding" This one is just SO OVERDONE and it doesn't even make any sense! Love triangles. I'm so, so done with these. Thankfully they're pretty rare in Fantasy/SF so I don't