Lost in My Library

I like when books make me feel things, and I know that a lot of readers agree with me. It's why we aggressively recommend the books that have turned us into sobbing messes. However, I think as a whole, we think of feeling things while reading as feeling sad or angry or frustrated. Why don't we put a little more focus on the books that make us happy? I was very glad to see that this week's Top Ten Tuesday (a weekly feature at The Broke and the Bookish ) was top 10 books that will make you laugh. So take a break from the tearjerkers, sit back, and relax. (You'll laugh till you collapse! This is what happens to me now that Animaniacs i s on Netflix. ) 1. The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Shades of London #1) - Maureen Johnson is one of the funniest YA authors I know of. I don't think I've ever read a book by her that hasn't made me laugh. This one just happens to be the one I read the most recently. I'll admit that this doesn't reall...

I mostly read YA. It's what I'm the most consistently interested in. Still, every once in a while, I dive into the admittedly intimidating world of classics. I definitely don't like every classic that I read - see my school reading list for just a few examples - but I've been surprised by more than a few books. There are a lot of people who are like me in that they usually reach for YA. Some of those people have probably decided that they want to stick with YA, and that's completely fine! I will be the last person to ever judge you negatively based on your reading taste. But maybe some people want to branch out a bit more, and that's great, too! And if some of those people don't quite know where to start, I hope that this post will help. I picked a few YA books and found classics that remind me of them. This post works the other way, too. If you're an avid classics reader who's somehow found your way onto my blog, maybe you'll want to try s...

A couple of months ago, Raeleen of padfootandprongs07 on YouTube did a challenge that I though was really interesting: book math . Which books would you fuse toget her to mak e another book? Would you subtract a book from that? She challenged people to figure out what multiplication and division would be, but I didn' t quite get that far. Maybe if I do another one of these. I decided to give it a try, and I came up with three pretty good equations , and I wrote a bit of an explanation for each of them. This is much simpler (and much more fun) than actual math . Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children + A Death- Struck Year = In the Shadow of Blackbirds  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - creep y historical fiction with photos throughout the book. The photos in Miss Peregrine's are a bit more directly related to the plot, but they're important in both books. A Death-Struc k Year - the setting ( the West Coast of the U.S. during...

I haven't been a particularly active blogger lately. You can probably tell that from the fact that it's now more than a week into April and my March wrap-up isn't up yet. And as much as I'd like this post to say that this was a short-term thing and that I'll be back to posting multiple times a week starting now, I can't do that. Why not? There's the fact that I'm a lot busier right now than I thought I would be. I thought that second semester senior year was supposed to be easy, but there's just so much going on right now that I can't find the time I want to write new posts. There's also the issue that writing is taking me a lot longer than it used to because of another fun development of the past few weeks: I have tendinitis. I injured myself playing piano right before my school band's competitive season. I'm supposed to be using my left hand as little as possible, which includes both piano and typing. I can type one-handed, but...

Title: These Shallow Graves Author: Jennifer Donnelly Series: N/A Length: 488 pages Published by: Random House Delacorte Publication date: October 27th, 2015 Diversity: none confirmed (see review for more details) Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ I was pretty much guaranteed to like this book. It had so many things that I love to read about. Gilded Age New York? Check. Aspiring female reporter? Check. Historical insane asylums? Check. A mystery, particularly one that becomes increasingly complex but still manages to tie everything together at the end? Check and check. Even considering only the things I could see from the blurb, this book practically SCREAMS Clara ! And I was not disappointed. Firstly, I have to talk about the setting . The turn of the 20th century is one of my favorite times in American history, especially in New York. Jennifer Donnelly certainly did her research. This book makes New York come alive. I didn't expect so many aspects of the city and of the time to...