Snowflakes and Spider Silk

Title:  All the Light We Cannot See Author:  Anthony Doerr Genre: Historical fiction My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary : From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining t...

Title:  Armada Author:  Ernest Cline Genre: Science fiction, humor My rating: 4 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: Zack Lightman has spent his life dreaming. Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe. And then he sees the flying saucer. Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the eart...

Two more books before I finish my challenge! I think I can actually finish the challenge, but I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch :) A: And I Darken by Kiersten White (2/26) B: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson (2/8) C: Court of Thieves by Kate Elliott (1/12) D: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (4/3) E: The Expats by Christopher Pavone (10/6) F: Fall of Giants (8/30) G: A Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (1/22) H: His Majesty's Dragon (3/30) I: The Immortal Heights (1/5) J: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (8/26) K: Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette  Kowal  (8/23) L: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (9/4) M: Me Before You by JoJo Moyes (3/21) N: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff (6/18) O: Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine (3/12) P: Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov (6/15) Q: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world that cannot stop talking by Susan Cain (3/27) R: Rook by Sharon Cameron (3/7) S: Shadows of ...

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme: Top Ten Creepy Books So I've been AWOL for 2 weeks, and I honestly don't have a dramatic reason for it. Life is just busy, applying to grad school is tough! Even though I haven't been posting much, I have  been reading. A lot of my recent reads have been creepy to get into the Halloween spirit, even though I don't usually read a lot of horror. That said, here are some of my favorite books that got under my skin.   THIS BOOK TERRIFIED ME. Listening to it on audio made it worse (better?). It's subtle because you never actually meet the "Bad guys" and it's more about the creepiness of what you can't see than what you can.   I just finished this on Saturday. It was my first Stephen King book/movie/anything and I loved it! It was terrifying but also, oddly enough, really beautifully written. The Overlook is one creepy...

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme: Top Ten Books I read on Recommendations   I didn't like ToG that much, but the blogger community convinced me to keep going. So far I've enjoyed the series much more than book 1, so thanks blogger community ;)   A friend recommended this to me in high school and I didn't get to it until this year, after we both graduated college...better late than never?   One of my best friends recommended this to me when we were freshmen in college. It was my first fantasy book since middle school, and it got me hooked onto one of my now-favorite authors and fantasy all over again :)   Another book my really good friend recommended to me freshmen year, but this one didn't go over as well! My Wise Man's Fear review  describes alllllll the very mixed feelings.   Another thumbs up to the collective recomme...

Title:  The Expats Author:  Chris Pavone Genre: Suspense, contemporary My rating: 4 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage . . . and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew. She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn’t speak, doing the housewifely things she’s never before done—play-dates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and unending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, doing a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she’s not allowed to know. He’s becoming distant and evasive; she’s getting lonely and bored. Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they claim to be, and terrified that her own...

Title:  Ancillary Justice Author:  Ann Leckie Genre: Science fiction My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance. I LOVED THIS. You know the kinds of books that require a lot more thinking than whatever you'd been reading recently, and you have to read and re-read the first bit multiple times until things start to make sense? My first experience with that sort of book was A Wrinkle in Time, my first sci-fi book at the age of 8. I think I was just too young to understand the whole tesseract business and I had to read the first part of the bo...

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme: Top Ten Favorite Villains It's no secret that I like my villains multi-dimensional and complex. My favorite villains are the ones that think they're doing the right thing or who have a tortured past that makes you want to sympathize with them just a teensy bit. I also have a soft spot for the villains who are just so plain evil that you can't believe they're human...I love how terrifying it is to know there is no line the villain will not cross. So here are some of my favorite multidimensional and terrifying villains!   Lady De Winter  - one of the first villains I read about who actually freaked me out. She's just so cold and terrifying.   Mayor Prentiss - completely evil and INSANE. This man is not human.   Queen Levana - evil and ruthless, but has quite sad past and you can really see why she is obsessed with the things...