Friday, January 4, 2013

My Muscles Are Sore from All the Cringing While Reading the Mortal Instruments Series...HELP!



Okay people....tell me what to do.  So I borrowed The Mortal Instruments Series from my sister.  I burned through City of Bones in like a day (Yeah....I know I'm late to the party....by like a lot,  I know its unforgivable for a book blogger but get over it and keep reading!).  I burned through the first half of City of Ashes in about another day.  Then I stopped.  It just got too creepy.  I'm at a point where I want a spoiler.  Jace and Clary's relationship is so icky to me it is ruining the books.  Please tell me in the comments if I should keep reading or bail.  


*****SPOILER ALERT*****

If Jace and Clary are really brother and sister, I seriously don't want to read anymore, its just too gross.  So hit the comments and tell me if I should keep going.  My muscles are super sores from cringing through the reading.....please spoil it for me!!!



***IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE SERIES, THE COMMENTS ARE GOING TO BE FULL OF SPOILERS.....YE BE WARNED!***

Thursday, November 15, 2012

NaNoWriMo...It's Mid Month-Are You Stuck?

If you are out of the loop on NaNoWriMo, don't feel bad, most of the world is.  When I first read it, it sounded like Robot-ese. It stands for National Novel Writing Month.  It's a month where writers just go nuts and write write write with the goal to get a novel written in one month.  Trust me, as someone whose had writer's block on their own novel for a few years, writing a book in a month is a hefty feat indeed.

A lot of great stuff has come out of NaNoWriMo including the best sellers Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

So, if you are participating, are you stuck?  It's the middle of the month and you may be losing some steam, especially in anticipation of the Holidays quickly approaching.  A few weeks ago I ran across this article from GalleyCat, but I was saving it for mid month, so that y'all could get reinspired if you were losing steam.  This article houses Two Years Worth of Tips in one article.  You've got name genrators, title testers, pandora station ideas, you name it.  So if you are stuck, or just bored, check it out!

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/nanowrimo-writing-tips-in-a-single-post_b60041


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Feature and Follow: Whaddya Think of Bookish Copycats and FanFic?



It's that time again!  Feature and Follow over at Parajunkee's View.  This blog hop is THE BEST way to meet new people, find new blogs and of course, get new followers!  If you want to learn more about this blog hop, click on the button above and it'll take you right to the hop.  With each Friday Feature and Follow the hosts pose a question, and the million dollar question is....drumroll.......

Do you mind books with similar ideas to other books? Similar concepts, backgrounds, retellings or pulled-to-publish fanfic? 

 

Similar ideas don't bother me much.  For me, the biggest draw to a book, what makes me love it the most is not the plot, or the idea of the book, but the characters.  I love good juicy characters I can sink my teeth into.  Retellings are fine by me so long as it is quality material and inventive slants on the characters.  As for fanfic, I'm not a fan.  I have nothing against it conceptually, I just don't enjoy it.  As y'all know, I'm a Harry Potter fanatic so a looooong time ago, I checked out a bit of fanfic.  No matter how well written technically, everything I read lacked the original sparkle and pizzazz (I'm the mother of young girls, so yes, those are the sorts of adjectives I use, get over it :) of Rowling's characters.


What do you think?  

Are you down with similar concepts?  

What is the most important thing in a book?  Idea, characters, plot, twist ending?  

Sound off in the comments!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Bookish Besties: Which Character Got You Through Your Awkward Years?

Y'all know how I like to keep things fun and light around here on The Book Buff, but I'm about to change pace for a moment and get all deep and sentimental up in this piece.  

^^^^actual depiction of what I looked like writing this post^^^^

I remember as a kid I preferred my book friends to real friends.  It's true, and I know it's true for many of you.  Your book friends were there whenever you needed them and didn't care if you were an awkward preteen suffering through the agony that is puberty.  You didn't ever have to think of anything clever to say to impress them, and it didn't matter if your face had broken out terribly that day.  You could still be a co adventurer, a co conspirator or co whatever was happening in the story.  I know this may sound dumb to some people, but not to the people who get it, and those are the people I'm talking to.  I remember growing up and not understanding why I didn't quite fit in.  I wasn't a horrible outsider, but I wasn't an insider either, and that weird in between-ness was a terrible place to be.  I could always find solace in my books, the books themselves were my friends and the characters were my soul mates.  I think this connection early on in my life is why characters are so important to me now when I review a book.  

We all had characters that we connected with more than others.  These are our bookish besties.  Here are the ones I've had throughout my life....

First off are the girls in the series that introduced me to my life long love of history, The American Girls Collection.  These books really taught 6 year old me that people in the history books really were people with hopes, dreams and feelings.  I remember crying my eyes out while reading a book about Addy, one of their featured girls, who was a slave.  There was a scene where she had to eat slugs she missed while tending to the tobacco, and a scene where her brother was sold off to another plantation, these scenes taught me so much about compassion.  The books weren't perfect, but they taught me so much.  I felt like these girls were my own little historical clique.  Yes, I was a nerd from the very beginning.  So here were my bookish besties from my early childhood:



Kirsten Larson



Molly McIntyre


 
Felicity Merriman



Samantha Parkington


 
Addy Walker

Next up in my list of literary BFFs was the lovely little Lucy Pevensie from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 





Next came Hermione Granger (you know I had to fit a HP reference in here somewhere)  This girl had frizzy hair and was too smart for her own good sometimes, which described me to a tee at that age.

Next on the list is the always popular, Elizabeth Bennett.  Who doesn't love miss sassy pants Lizzie?


So that's it, that is my list.  

Who was/is your bookish bestie?

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Memes Memes Memes: A Very Potter Halloween!

I'm not really into the scary aspect of Halloween.  I don't like horror movies, I don't like Haunted Houses and I don't like gory makeup.  Buuuuuut I do love the fun aspect of Halloween.  I love the trick or treating, the hordes and hordes of costumed children and best of all, all the Harry Potter marathons on TV!  Y'all know me and my Harry Potter, I can't resist sharing when I find something fun.  So in honor of my favorite witches and wizards on this Halloween day, check out the Best Harry Potter Tastes from a very funny website, Taste of Awesome...










 



My apologies to all the Twihards, I'm not really a Twilight hater (but definitely not a lover either!) but you have to admit these are funny :)

Which one was your favorite?
Happy Halloween, be safe and have fun!







LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails