Top Ten Tuesday - Favorite Authors!

This is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. They feature a different top ten list every week. This week's topic is my top ten favorite authors.

1. Shel Silverstein

My favorite author as a child and not much has changed. I still adore him. I have such fond memories of Where The Sidewalk Ends and A Light In The Attic. I have a lot of nostalgia when I read his poetry.

2. Margaret Atwood

Her book, The Handmaid's Tale, stayed with me long after I finished reading it. I have read several of her books since then and love them. I admire the way she can tell a story. She is my hero.

3. Leah Raeder

Her book, Black Iris, was one of the best books I have read this year. Amazing characters, wonderful plot, beautiful writing . . . I love her!!

4. Gillian Flynn

I have read all three of her books and I have to say this: that woman can tell a story. Every single book has cry dysfunctional women characters and crazy plots that leave you guessing the entire time. If you haven't read Gone Girl, Sharp Obkects, and Dark Places then you are missing out!! And just like Gone Girl, her other two books are being made into movies as well. Dark Places comes out later this year and stars Charlize Theron!

5. Maya Angelou

Beautiful poetry, inspiring quotes, honorable woman . . .  she was such a great writer.

6. Amy Harmon

The Law of Moses pretty much rocked my world last year. I read it solely based on one other blogger's recommendation. I had never even heard of it. Her writing was amazing!! I just read another of her books, A Different Blue and it was no less beautiful.

7. Roxane Gay

This woman can write any genre. She wrote a great nonfiction, Bad Feminist. She also wrote one of the most amazing pieces of fiction I have ever read: An Untamed State. This is a book that will destroy you in the best possible way. 

8. Rainbow Rowell

This woman can write a story. She is also one of the few authors that can actually make me swoon while reading her book. I swooned during Eleanor and Park more than once.

9. Blake Crouch

Two words: Wayward Pines. Best. Series. Ever. I am just going to leave it at that. May 14: TV show based on the book series premieres on Fox!

10. Caroline Kepnes

Her book, You, was so engaging and thrilling. I think it says a lot about the writing when I actually rooted for the crazy psychopath stalker a couple of times. Yeah, that happened. To say that I am excited for the sequel in September is a vast understatement.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Musing Mondays - Taking Control Of My TBR Pile

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by Jenn at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! This is when we speak about bookish rants or issues, among other things.

For this week's topic, I will be talking about my TBR pile, which is out of control! The books on my TBR I am referring to are just the ones I own, but have not read. I don't even want to think about the number of books on my TBR that I don't even own yet. That list is in the 300's.

I counted the number of eBooks on my Kindle and the number of ARCs I have to read. It appears that the months of April, May, and June were very popular in terms of publication dates because of all of my ARCs tended to fall within those months. I have tried to cut myself some slack, but for the most part I like to have the ARCs read prior to publication. And there are some books on my Kindle that I have wanted to read for years.

I decided to count these books and put the number of books on my handy little spreadsheet so I could keep a record of it.. There were 113 ebooks on my Kindle and yes, this number included eARCs. I am sure this number doesn’t seem very high. But I started thinking about all the money I spend on books every month. I don’t think this number has been under 100 in a very long time. I read two and then buy five more. Drastic steps had to be taken – I decided to put a temporary hold on the purchase of any new books or requesting ARCs. For the past few weeks, I have no new books to speak of and that feels weird. I actually have a monthly budget for books. For the past month, I have not used any of that money AT ALL. Crazy, right? I have steadily seen the number of books drop. I have been able to read books that I have been meaning to read for a while. At this time, the number of books on my Kindle has dropped from 113 to 91. Woo-hoo!

The downside is that I haven’t been able to read any new releases. Last week, I was so close to buying new books just because. Buying books is a hard habit to break, especially with all of the new books being released right now. I decided I will not buy any new books until at least July. That should allow me to make a sizeable dent in my TBR. Now as far as requesting ARCs, I have managed to stay away from even browsing on NetGalley. I don’t know how long I can hold out on that one though. Those are free so it is incredibly tempting!



How out of control is your TBR Pile?

Sunday Post

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer

I don't know about anyone else, but this has been a CRAZY week!

Here are a few snippets from my life this week:

• Me and the other people who live in my housing complex have been trying to get our landlord to switch Internet providers for weeks to get a faster speed. They finally decided to install the new Internet service this week. Well . . . this is Italy and workers are not known to be efficient. My Internet went down on Monday and we didn't get it back until Thursday! Arghhh! 
• On Friday, my power went out for about five hours for no reason. So no Internet and no TV. Insanity. Yeah, that happens occasionally in Naples also. Man, I love this country but it does have its flaws. Anyway, if it is taking me a while to respond to your comments, that is why. I am still playing a bit of catch up. 
• My husband left yesterday for a business trip to Seattle. I am almost positive that my dog misses him just a little bit more than I do. Last night, every time I went towards the window or the door, Callie would jump up and run to her spot by the window to see if he was there. It was both adorable and sad at the same time. 

• The upside to my husband's trip is I will get plenty of uninterrupted reading time! I am also able to catch up on the shows I watch that he does not: Scandal, Once Upon A Time, and Law and Order: SVU.
• Thanks to A Different Blue by Amy Harmon, I am finally out of my reading slump! Yay to enjoying reading again!

This week, I posted a top ten list of my favorite inspiring bookish quotes.

I also posted book reviews for House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy and Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill.

I am taking advantage of all this alone time to schedule quite a few blog posts in advance. It makes me feel so organized!

Next week on the blog:

A Discussion on Taking Control of my TBR Pile

A Top Ten List of My Favorite Authors

A review of Blondes by Emily Schultz

A review of The Lie by C.L. Taylor

How was your week?

BOOK REVIEW: Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill

This is a book review for Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill. I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The scheduled publication date for this book is May 12, 2015.

Where women are created for the pleasure of men, beauty is the first duty of every girl. In Louise O'Neill's world of Only Every Yours women are no longer born naturally, girls (called "eves") are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age. Freida and Isabel are best friends. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year, they expect to be selected as companions--wives to powerful men. All they have to do is ensure they stay in the top ten beautiful girls in their year. The alternatives--life as a concubine, or a chastity (teaching endless generations of girls)--are too horrible to contemplate. But as the intensity of final year takes hold, the pressure to be perfect mounts. Isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty--her only asset--in peril. And then into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride. Freida must fight for her future--even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known.

Wow, the world that Louise O'Neill creates puts even The Handmaid's Tale to shame. It was scary and creep and so disturbing. Freida lives in a world where women are appreciated for beauty and nothing else. These women are created in labs. They are then are raised in schools and taught how to please a man. They are raised to be either a companion or a concubine  A companion is the wife of a "Inheritant" and her only duty is to give birth to sons until the age of 40, at which point she has a "termination date" so her beauty is always preserved. A concubine lives with many other women and never has children, but is there solely for the sexual pleasure of men. The girls in the school all have eating disorders because they are told repeatedly that "fat woman must be obsolete." These girls are so mean to each other. They put each other down if they are too fat and they put each other down if they are too skinny  These women are told repeatedly that men didn't like women who cried, men didn't like women who were angry or showed emotion of any kind, men don't like women who are academic, etc.


I felt equal parts frustrated and sad for Frieda. She would make these decisions that would make me want to scream at her. But I could also relate to her. I don't live in the kind of world Frieda does (thank goodness) and yet, I think all the same ugly things about myself that Frieda does. It's sad. Towards the end, when she was striving so hard to become a companion I could feel her desperation so strongly. The ending left me just as frustrated as the entire book. It is not the kind of book that leads to a satisfying resolution, much like The Handmaid's Tale. But this is a book that you need to read. This book will stay with me for a very long time.

Here are a few quotes from the book: 

"I should leave, but just for a moment I want to stay in here. I want to hide, fold into the shadows and become invisible so no one can look at me anymore."

"I have a theory that she views her need for food as her only flaw."

"I massage my thighs violently, wanting to tear strips off them as I feel the skin dimpling underneath my fingers. The room is inky black and I am glad. I am glad. I don't want the others to see me, to see how wrong I am."

"I stare at myself in my mirrors, seeing how less beautiful I am in comparison, how less perfect, less, less, less I am."

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Buy!!!

BOOK REVIEW: House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy

This is a book review for House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy. I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. 

Ben and Caroline Tierney and their two young boys are hoping to start over. Ben has hit a dead end with his new novel, Caroline has lost her banking job, and eight-year-old Charlie is being bullied at his Manhattan school. When Ben inherits land in the village of Swannhaven, in a remote corner of upstate New York, the Tierneys believe it’s just the break they need, and they leave behind all they know to restore a sprawling estate. But as Ben uncovers Swannhaven’s chilling secrets and Charlie ventures deeper into the surrounding forest, strange things begin to happen. The Tierneys realize that their new home isn’t the fresh start they needed . . . and that the village’s haunting saga is far from over. House of Echoes is a novel that shows how sometimes the ties that bind us are the only things that can keep us whole.

I wasn't sure what to make of this book. I was not sure if the author meant it to be scary, creepy, or just an engaging mystery. Ben Tierney and his wife Caroline have suffered through a lot of changes, namely the addition of their second child and Caroline's issues with the birth of the child. Through Ben's narration, we learn that Caroline was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder after the birth of the second child. According to the doctors, the hormones of the pregnant brought out the illness. That was a bit confusing to me. Granted I don't have a lot of experience with Bipolar, but I was under the impression that symptoms started manifesting themselves somewhat earlier than when a person is in their 30's. And why wouldn't the hormones of the first pregnancy have brought out the illness? I really don't think the author did much research with this disease because it really just seemed like a secondary plot that didn't go anywhere. But I decided to suspend my belief with that one and just go with it. The Tierneys move to Swannhaven for a fresh start. They buy an estate called The Crofts, which includes a huge mansion of 65 rooms that overlooks the valley of Swannhaven.

One thing that Brendan Duffy did extremely well was the atmosphere. The house that the Tierneys move into is in upstate New York, but it might as well be on another planet. The town is isolated and the forest is vast and scary. The author did a great job at making me feel like I was right there with the family. It was creepy and I am not sure I would have been able to live in that house like the Tierneys. I think the author's mistake was that the book was very atmosphere heavy and the plot was lacking. There was so much attention paid to the setting that the book moved very slow.

Not long after the Tierneys move in, creepy stuff starts happening. I will spare you the details, but it involves severe violence to animals. The problem was that Ben dismissed the events as pranks played by townspeople because some of them were not happy the Tierneys were there, renovating the Crofts. The reason for their dislike is never really made clear. The assumption is that the town is one of those small towns with people who don't trust outsiders. Because of Ben's dismissal, it was hard for me to care very much either. I wasn't sure if this was going to be a book about a mystery surrounding unexplained events or a book about trying to earn the town's trust. The author does show Charlie's POV (their second child) and it indicates there is something more dangerous going on than just pranks. Here is the main issue: this book moves at a snail's pace. The ending was a bit of a surprise and it was unusual, but by the time I figured out what was going on, I didn't really care anymore. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip this one. There is not enough suspense or mystery in this one. It was not a compelling read.

Top Ten Tuesday - My Favorite Quotes!

This is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. They feature a different top ten list every week. This week's topic is favorite inspiring or encouraging quotes from books.

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. "You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest." - All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

5. 

6. "But here's the thing, and maybe it's a secret: people will always talk about failure but no one might ever think to turn their head, look you straight in the eye, and ask you how broken your heart would be if you never even went out there and tried." - If You Find This Letter, Hannah Brencher

7. 

8. 

9. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you - I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

10. 

It's Monday. What are YOU Reading?

It's Monday, what are you reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey to share what you have read over the past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week.

Last week, was my slowest reading week in a while. I only finished two books and I didn't have very strong feelings for either of them. I am not sweating it though. All year, I have been reading five books (or more) a week. I think my brain just needs a break. I am still in sort of a slump where nothing really excites me. Hopefully that will change soon.

Here is what I did read last week:

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy

Here is what I am reading right now:

The Blondes by Emily Schultz

What will I read next?

Even though I have some ARCs I need to read, I need to shake things up a bit to get out of this slump. I am thinking maybe A Different Blue by Amy Harmon. I really like this author so I am hoping I will like it.



What are you reading right now?