Day 3 - 2014 End of Year Book Survey

Hi guys! It is Day 10 of the Winter Re-Read-a-Thon and Day 3 of the My Year in Books Week. Today is December 31st, meaning that it is the LAST DAY of 2014. To wrap up this year, I'm going to do Jamie of the Perpetual Page Turner's survey. It's a great way to look back and remember our reading year. I am going to include the books that I read on November and December of 2014 because I couldn't remember which books I read during those two months and this year.

2014 Reading Stats

Number Of Books You Read: 154 (counting novellas)

Number of Re-Reads: None (yet) I'm participating in the Winter Re-Read-a-Thon, so I'm probably re-reading some right now!

Genre You Read The Most From: YA

Best in Books

1. Best Book You Read In 2014?

(If you have to cheat — you can break it down by genre if you want or 2013 release vs. backlist)

Since I did a Top 14 of 2014 post yesterday, I'll just do my top 3:

Crown of Midnight

Clockwork Princess

Cress

(What's with all the Cs?)

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour. After all the 5 stars from, well, everybody, I really thought I would love this book, but I ended up giving it 3 stars

3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2014?

I'll Give You the Sun. I previously did not have much experience reading contemporaries, and the ones that I read were rarely 5 stars.

4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did) In 2014?

Throne of Glass. I think I've talked about this book enough to my friends that they're now sick of it.

5. Best series you started in 2014? Best Sequel of 2014? Best Series Ender of 2014?

The Lunar Chronicles; Crown of Midnight; Clockwork Princess

6. Favorite new author you discovered in 2014?

Sarah J. Mass. Need I say more?

7. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?

None

8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?

Cress. The action in this book are brilliant and I literally could not put it down.

9. Book You Read In 2014 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year?

The Lunar Chronicles to prep for Winter!

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2014?

The Assassin's Blade. The colors and how they work together is amazing, and the way that they portrayed Celaena is so baddass.

11. Most memorable character of 2014?

Celaena Sardothean. She's extremely strong, powerful, daring, sassy and all are around a memorable character.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2014?

Shatter Me. I just read this book a few days ago, and the cross-outs are unlike anything I've ever seen before.

13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2014?

Unravel Me. I know this is a weird choice, but I'm currently reading this book and it made me really think about war and innocence and our society and how is there really such thing as killing for a "good cause"?

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2014 to finally read?

None

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2014?

Oh, wow. This is impossible. If you haven't noticed, I love quotes. I always favorite quotes after I finish reading every book on goodeeads, and I have a Pinterest board in which I pin my 200+ favorites quotes. Hm.... Of the top of my head, it's " Tell the sun and stars hello for me." by Rick Riordan; "Shot for the moon. Even if you miss you'll land among the stars." by Las Brown.

16. Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2013?

City of Heavenly Fire: 725 pages

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe: 1 page (It's actually a poem)

17. Book That Shocked You The Most

(Because of a plot twist, character death, left you hanging with your mouth wide open, etc.)

Champion. The ending didn't shock me, exactly, but I have to give credit to Marie Lu for its cleverness.

18. OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!)

(OTP = one true pairing if you aren’t familiar)

Tessa and Will

Chaol and Celaena

Lola and Cricket of

Cinder and Kai of the Lunar Chronicles

19. Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year

June and Noah of I'll Give You the Sun

20. Favorite Book You Read in 2014 From An Author You’ve Read Previously

The House of Hades

21. Best Book You Read In 2014 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure:

Harry Potter

22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2014?

Cricket Bell *swoon

23. Best 2014 debut you read?

I know it's not released in 2014, but Legend

24. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?

Harry Potter

25. Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?

Lola and the Boy Next Door

26. Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2014?

Clockwork Princess

27. Hidden Gem Of The Year?

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson (more people need to know about this book!)

28. Book That Crushed Your Soul?

Crown of Midnight

29. Most Unique Book You Read In 2014?

I'll Give You the Sun (the writing style is unlike anything I've ever read before)

30. Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?

Crown of Midnight (made me love the book more)

Your Blogging/ Bookish Life

1. New favorite book blog you discovered in 2014?

2. Favorite review that you wrote in 2014?

Heir of Fire, because I think it's my most coherent one.

3. Best discussion/non-review post you had on your blog?

Top 5 Wednesdays, they're fun to write!

4. Best event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, memes, etc.)?

None

5. Best moment of bookish/blogging life in 2014?

Reaching 2000 views (I know it's small, but still)

6. Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?

The Winter Re-Read-a-Thon sign up post

7. Post You Wished Got A Little More Love?

None

8. Best bookish discover (book related sites, book stores, etc.)?

Goodreads. I know.

9.  Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?

I didn't set any.

Looking Ahead

1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2014 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2015?

Attachments

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2015 (non-debut)?

Winter

3. 2015 Debut You Are Most Anticipating?

None

4. Series Ending/A Sequel You Are Most Anticipating in 2015?

Winter

5. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging Life In 2015?

Reach 50 subscribers? *fingers crossed

6. A 2015 Release You’ve Already Read & Recommend To Everyone:

None

Whew. That was VERY long. Well, this is it for today's post, I'll see you people tomorrow with another one!

Day 2 - Top 10 books of 2014

Hi guys! This is Day 9 of the Winter Re-Read-a-Thon and Day 2 of the My Year in Books week! Today I am going to do my Top 10 of 2014. I was originally planning to do a top 14 of 2014, but I felt like that was too many books, so we're down to 10.

10. In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken

I actually read this not too long ago, and it was definitely my favorite of the series. I was a bit surprised because I know how dystopian governments can be very hard to wrap up believably, and Alexandra Bracken definitely accomplished that. This book was gritty and dark, but has slivers of hope that I thought was very fitting.

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

What made this book my favorite of this series was the amount of action and heartbreak in it. Specifically, the Battle of Hogwarts. The characters gets so baddass (Neville!)

8. Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins
I really enjoyed this book due to the sheer amount of funny dialogues and sass in this book. Harper, the main character can be seen as self-centered, but I liked her. This book made me smile and laugh a whole lot, and that is always a plus.

7. Champion by Marie Lu

I know that this book has a lot of people unsatisfied because of the ending, but I really liked it. Again, it is really tough to wrap up a good dystopian, and I thought that the ending was the right amount heartbreak and hope, and it was so clever!

6. Lola and the Boy Next Door

I also read this one not too long ago and loved it. Lately I've been thinking about giving up on contemporaries due to the lack of 5-stars ratings that I've given to them, but this book changed my mind. I've never read any contemporary that made me so happy and giddy in a long while.

5. I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

I'm pretty surprised that a contemporary made it this far on the list, but here it is. I've realized that I like books with heavier topics and ones that ate darker, so this book is definitely one of them. I loved the relationship between Noah and June, and it was beautiful, seeing them heal together.

4. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan

It was really tough to pick one from the 13 books of Rick Riordan's books that I read this year, but this came to be my favorite. I just really liked the setting of Tartarus since it's fresh, and I feel like the 7 grew to themselves a lot in this book.


3. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
After reading this book, Throne of Glass immediately became one of my favorite series. In this book, Celaena became the kickass assassin that we were promised. Sarah J. Maas is always outdoing herself with each book in the series, and I already gave Throne of Glass 5 stars, so you can imagine how many stars I wanted to gave this book.

2. Cress by Marissa Meyer

Cress is probably the most lighthearted book in this whole "top 5" section, mainly because of Captain Thorne. The relationships made me feel happy, the plot kept me at the edge of my seat, and the awesome characters didn't hurt either. Plus, Winter is now my most anticipated of 2015, because I seriously want it now.

1. Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

This book broke me. It was so satisfying, while being bittersweet at the same time. Compared to The Mortal Instruments, I felt like this series is well, better for my taste. The characters are more likable, the villain was more scary and the setting were more interesting.

And that is it! This list took a while to compile, because there's just so many good book that I read this year. I tried too include one book per author to avoid repetotions, which was a but of a toughie, but I did it! Anyways, that's it for today and I'll see you tomorrow with another post.

P. S. How are you guys doing in the Winter-re-Read-a-Thon?

Day 1 - Reading Rewind 2014

Hi guys! This is Day 8 of the Winter Re-Read-a-Thon and Day 1 of the My Year in Books week! Today's topic (as you've probably seen from the title) is Reading Rewind. I was inspired to do this by YouTube Rewind 2014. It's just a way to summarize our reading for the year of 2014, because I think it will be interesting to look back at this, say, three years from now. Anyways, let's just get started.

So 2014 was a year of reading, discoveries and firsts. I read 153 books this year (+ November and December of 2013), mostly YA. I discovered YA back in November last year, which is why I'm adding it to the count because I can't remember which book I read during those two months. Until the beginning of this year, I was completely unaware of booktube, goodreads, and many other things. I discovered that there was a community of people who also liked reading and discussing the beautiful things called books. I discovered that there was another way to keep track of your books other than writing them in a piece of paper. I discovered and participated in my first readathon -the Booktubeathon, which was a lot of fun. During the summer, I stumbled upon what would be my first book blog. Summer was crazy for me. I remember furiously reading books after books and my proudest moment, which was finished the Order of the Phoenix, an 870 pages book on one day, which was the last day of the Booktubeathon. This year was also when I made this blog, which I did on a whim, but am not regreting. My first cry over a book (Clockwork Princess), my first book hangover (also, after Clockwork Princess), and my first reading slump. Yup. And this was after Booktubeathon.

Well, this year was one heck of a reading year, and I am so very excited for 2015!

P.S. How are you guys doing on the Winter Re-Read-a-Thon?

Winter Re-Read-a-Thon Challenges

Halo! It's almost the date for our readathon and the challenges are here! There are challenges for the whole readathon, and there are giveaway challenges.

First, here are your Winter Re-Read-a-Thon challenges!

Re-read a standalone

Re-read 6 books

Re-read the first book you remember reading (that you own)

Re-read a book by your favorite childhood author

Secondly, you will need to write a wrap up that includes:

A poem made of all the book titles you've read

5 favorite quotes from all the books you re-read

Comparison with the first time you've read the book

The hosts, Emily and Anna has provided giveaway challenges that will last until the last day of the readathon, here are the links:

Anna: 1st Giveaway (1st day - 6th day) - Unquenchable Reads

Emily: 2nd Giveaway (7th day - 12 day) - Rooftop Reading

There will be twitter sprints on our twitter account on these dates:
22 December
24 December
26 December
28 December
30 December
1 January

You are welcome to make daily posts, or you can post daily updates in the goodreads thread. Please post the links to your TBR down one the comments!

P.S. If you haven't signed up yet, do it here!

My Year In Books Week

Hi guys! In my previous post, I said that I am going to post every day for the week of December 29th - January 4th, and here is an explanation. I am hosting the first (and hopefully not my last) My Year In Books week. It is made by me, run by me, and participated by me :D, meaning that I'm just doing it on this blog to get me to post more. Here are the posts that I have planned:

29 December - Monday: Reading Rewind of 2014
-That's basically just a summary of my reading year, the milestones that I've reached, new genres I've discovered etc.

30 December - Tuesday: Top 14 Books of 2014
-The classic.

31 December - Wednesday: End of Year Book Survey 2014
-This is Jamie of Perpetual Page Turner's survey that I saw a few days ago (or at least last year's) and really liked.

1 January - Thursday: Best 2014 (Non-bookish related things)
-Music/ Blogs/ Moments/ Random

2 January - Friday: New Years Readsolutions
-My reading goals for the glorious new year (books I want to read/ books I want to finish)

3 January - Saturday: New Years Blogsolutions
-My bloggish goals for the new year (types of posts that I want to do/ new features?)

4 January - Sunday: Most Anticipated Books of 2015
-Whether it's a standalone, the next book in a series, we all have it :)

And that is My Year in Books Week. You are welcome to join me if you feel like it, but I'm going to do this just to commemorate my reading year of 2014, so I'll be doing it anyways. That's it for now, bye!

Update

Hi guys! This is just going to be a short update explaining my spontaneous mini-hiatus and telling you my plans for this blog for the next month or so.


Said explanation, isn't really one. I just don't know. My last post was 10 days ago, and I just lost my drive, at least temporary. I just don't want to post, which is weird to me. And now, I'm caught up in finals, (Day 3!). So, I will not be posting anything until either Saturday or Sunday for an announcement for the Winter Re-Read-a-Thon (and if you haven't signed up, yet, do it!) and a post on Monday (22nd) for the first day of the readathon. I will then be posting a wrap up on January 2nd, which is the last day of the readathon. I will be going to a 10-day vacation with my family in which I won't have any wifi during most of the readathon, but no worries, I will be scheduling a post to come every day for the week of the new year (December 29th - January 4th), and that post will come right after this one :)

Heroine Tag

Halo! Welcome back to my blog! I'm here to do the Heroine Tag. This tag was created by My Little Corner for Books and I was tagged by Haley from My Addiction Books. And here we go!

1. Which heroine would you trade places with? 
Hm... Of to a harsh start... I don't know, I feel like I'm not fit for any of them because of how much they all go through, but if I can shoulder it, I would pick Annabeth of the PJO and HoO by Rick Riordan. She goes through hard things, but she is all the things that I want to be and more.

2. Which heroine would you push off a cliff and hope that there are some jagged rocks at the bottom?
I'm in the minority here, but Cassie from The 5th Wave. I just don't like her. Or the book, for that matter.

3. Heroine you couldn't care less about? They're so bland that they don't even trigger the hate in you?
Sadie from the Kane Chronicles. I don't know, this whole series is bland, in my opinion. And this broke my heart because it's Rick Riordan, but that's the truth.

4. Heroine you thought you wouldn't like and ending up liking and vice versa? I don't read books unless I know I'll like them, so I have no answers for this. The heroine that I thought I would like but didn't is again, Cassie.

5. Side heroine who is much more interesting than main heroine?
Ringer. I liked her a lot more than Cassie.

6. Which heroine would you want as your friend?

Cinder, because she is sassy, down-to-earth and awkward, like me.

7. Which heroine do you wish would just CHOOSE (between the guys in her little love triangle)?
Lina of the Delirium trilogy. I just wish she would choose Alex or Julian, especially with how the series ended.

8. "Bad girl" heroine?
Celaena Sardothean, she is one of the most baddass heroines I've ever read about.

9. "Good girl" heroine?
Annabeth and Hermione, they're pretty awesome.

10. Your favorite heroine of them all? (If you can't choose, pick your top 3.)
Oh, wow.
3. Annabeth Chase
2. Hermione Granger
1. Celaena Sardothean

So. That was my Heroine Tag Tag. It was a really fun tag, you guys should do it. I'm not going to tag anyone this time, so if you decided to do this, feel free to say that I tagged you. And if you guys decide to do it, please leave the link of your video or post down below :D

Would You Rather Book Tag

Halo! Welcome back to my blog! I'm here to do the Would You Rather Book Tag. This tag was created by RayKayBooks and I was tagged by Courtney from CourtneyReads. She tagged me a very long time ago and I just forgot about it, so... Without further ado, let's get started :)

Would you rather...

Top 5 Books over 500 Pages

Halo people of the internet! Today I am going to bring you.... My Top 5 Books That are 500+ Pages! (that was longer than I expected). This is the Top 5 Wednesday topic for today, the 27th? Yes, it's the 27th. Wow, it's almost December, it's passing so fast! Anyways, I'm really happy that I'm getting back to this again and to actually post it on a Wednesday. Now, I don't make it a point to read big books, usually, I don't even care about the size, but it turns out that I have read quite a few and that two of my three favorite books are more than 500 pages. So this list took quite some time to compile, but here you go!

Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas Book Review

Heir of Fire is the third book in the Throne of Glass series (not counting the novella bind-up) by Sarah J. Maas. If you don't know what the series is, let me give you a synopsis of the first book (this is from goodreads): 

"After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin. Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king's council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom."

If that doesn't interest you, I can promise that the series takes way bigger problems than this, but you have to start small, you know? If you are looking for a solid fantasy series, this is for you. Now, if you've read Crown of Midnight, the second book, and haven't picked up this one, what are you waiting for? Do it. If I were to sum up this book in one word, it would be "epic". We get a much larger view of what's going around. With new characters, new perspectives, new lands, new creatures, and new revelations, this book sets us up for what seems to be an action-packed and emotion-filled heck of a journey for our main character, Celaena Sardothean.

DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK.

My TBR - Series Edition

Hai guys! Today's post is a little different, I'm going to list the series that I haven't started and am interested in starting (there are 36). I want all of you to comment and help me choose which ones should be my priorities. Some of these are pretty embarrassing, just because of how many people love it and say it's there favorite series. If you have read any of these series, please share your thoughts about it.You can say why you like it, why you didn't like it, or just your thoughts in general. If you haven't you can say if it's in your TBR or not and why. But please, DO NOT SPOIL any of these series:

And that's my post for today! I want to shorten my new series TBR to about 20 books by the end of the years, so thanks for helping me :D