Maintenance: An Update Schedule

Just a Maintenance Note

As my reading time is severely cut back by school and other projects I find myself worrying about maintaining this blog.  I originally intended to post a blog every time I finished a book.  With a relatively short amount of time and quite a few books to read I assumed I would be finishing books fairly regularly.  Unfortunately I seem to be indulging binge reading.

I have decided to update my bog every Tuesday and sometimes Thursday whether or not I have a new book finished.  If I finish more than two books in a week I'll post more than two blogs, but I will always post at least one blog every week.  Hopefully this will get me reading more regularly so that I have something to post about, but it will definitely keep me active online.

Here's hoping you're finding more time to read than I am!

Book Seven

Reached

By Ally Condie

I finally got my hands on a copy of Reached.  With the semester taking off in earnest I've been struggling to find time for reading, but when this book came in at the library I found time for it.

Reached was the perfect ending for this series.  The story is amazing and the twist that provides the main plot thread for this last book was clever.  I found myself wishing for more when I finished reading.  There are many unexplored aspects of this universe that I would have liked to learn more about.  The surrounding enemy and mysterious Otherlands left me imagining the setting to be North Korean despite name like Cassie.  

I do have my complaints out about this book and the series in general.  I loved the story.  It was unique and interesting, but the books themselves are wordier than necessary.  The writing is circular and dull in places.  As a reader I recognized the poetic wordiness is meant to mirror the poetic nature of Cassie, the first person narrator, but it makes the book more difficult to read, not a good feature for a young adult novel.  Each of the books requires trimming.  If they were half their size they would be much better.

Recommendations:

At the end of the day I did enjoy this book and series so I definitely would recommend this book to YA readers.  I would describe this series as a cross between Hunger Games and Twilight set in the Ugly's universe.  Fans of those series will love this one.  I would not recommend this for low readers.  The wordiness makes the book difficult to read despite the good story and would be frustrating for low readers.

Stars:

7 out of 10

Break Time

My semester has taken off and my reading time has gone down to nothing.  Between grading papers, teaching, and keeping up on the classes I'm taking I've had little time for reading (the life of a grad student is difficult).  I happened to find a few minutes for myself today and thought I'd recommend the best book I've read so far this year and the book I've already read and suggest for other's reading list this year.

Best book this year:

Divergent by Veronica Roth

I cannot wait for Insurgent, I had to order it since none of my local bookstores had it in stock.

Similar books:

Hunger Games, Uglies, Leviathan, and Host

Book I've already read but recommend:

The Host by Stephanie Meyers

With the movie coming out there is precious little time to read this book before the internet is full of spoilers.  I know the Twilight series have a bad reputation, but Host is a different book and I enjoyed it.