Monthly Archives: October 2016

My Books, NaNoWriMo, Writing

NaNoWriMo Prep

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NaNoWriMo starts in two days!! I’m so excited!

This is my first year participating in NaNoWriMo and I can’t wait to start, but I’m really behind on preparing for it. I’ve already temporarily put aside An American Werewolf in New Orleans and have come up with a new idea to write for NaNoWriMo (which I’m not going to talk about too much yet) I realised too late that it might not have been such a good idea to pick this more complicated story to write for NaNoWriMo but I’m not going to change now!

I’ve done a lot of world building and I’ve invented a lot of characters but they’re not too developed, and all the plotting I’ve really done is coming up with the basic idea and some major plot points. (Give me a break, I’ve had a busy October!) But I do plan on working on the plotting and at least some character development in the next couple days.

I’ve kinda turned the den into a makeshift office as you can see in the picture above. I have my white board that I’m doing my world building on and my computer where I’m building my cast and keeping ideas for my plotline. I have made a soundtrack for my book which currently only has some movie soundtrack music on it.

I feel like I should say something about my NaNoWriMo project, so I’ll give you some vague info on it.  This is a fantasy book as you have probably put together by now. The most interesting thing about it that I’m currently willing to share is that it’s highly inspired by the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, one of my favorite games. And of course my book soundtrack has some of it’s music, I think Song of Storms is kinda the main song for this story right now. The main character is a boy, age 13 (I may change his age) and I have not yet settled on a name for him, I was thinking Lazarus, but I don’t know if that name fits him all that well.

Now I need to come up with a spoof title to refer to it as on this blog, I’m thinking about just using my real working title since I’m pretty sure I’ll change it later, but it does kind of give away something about my story that I don’t want to announce yet so I’ll just use a spoof title. I want to use the Zelda title so maybe something like The Legend of the City. I like that, it fits very well with my story since it does involve a legend of a city (it’s more of a small town but The Legend of the Town doesn’t sound as cool to me). I’m going to go with The Legend of the City.

That’s all I have to talk about today. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year I would love it if you would put your spoof or working title in the comments. Also, if you know any cool suggestions for my main character’s name please put that in the comments too.

Bye!

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Goosebumps: Top and Bottom Three

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Halloween is coming up! One of my favorite holidays! This would be a wonderful time to recommend scary books… but… I don’t read that many scary books, though I have read about thirty of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, so I thought I would recommend some of those.

To me, Goosebumps is kind of a hit-or-miss series, some of them I really like and some I really dislike. So today I’m going to recommend my top three favorite Goosebumps books so far.

I know what you’re thinking, “Only three?” Yes only three. You see, there are a lot of Goosebumps books and I find them to be pretty fast reads and I usually forget whether or not I liked some of them, so yah, only three. To make up for the small number how about I give my least favorite three too? Will that work? Ok! I’ll start with the least favorites so I can end this blog on a high note later.

So, my third least favorite Goosebumps book so far is: Welcome to Camp Nightmare:                                                                                                                  It was just one of the weirder, more boring Goosebumps books. I wasn’t too happy with some of the plot points. It wasn’t necessarily bad, it just wasn’t for me. In this book you follow a boy named Billy whose summer at camp starts edging to demonic.

My second to least favorite Goosebumps book is: You Can’t Scare Me!: Mainly because the title is too accurate. This book wasn’t scary at all. It was closer to realistic fiction than horror. You’re basically following a group of friends trying to prank a girl in their class who claims to be fearless. This was really just very boring for something that’s supposed to be a horror story. (which is usually the problem with the miss side of Goosebumps.)

My number one least favorite of the Goosebumps series so far: Attack of the Mutant:
Keep in mind that I had a stomach bug when I read this and that never improves what I think about a book. This book just seemed more disturbing than scary. It was really just too weird.

Now that I have those behind me let’s move on to my favorite three.

My third favorite Goosebumps book is: The Haunted Mask:                       It was a very interesting story. And it was also a pretty scary story. I really thought that the backstory for the monster was very original, I’ve never read anything like that before. (There’s probably something exactly like it and I’m the only human who doesn’t know about it).

My second to favorite Goosebumps is: Welcome to Dead House:                I believe this is the first in the Goosebumps series and it was a wonderful way to start! It’s probably one of the most scary. The story was just awesome, I thought the characters were pretty cool too.

Now for my very favorite Goosebumps: The Ghost Next Door:            This one has such a creative plot line, it’s just so good! It’s not the scariest book in the series, it’s spooky in the most. But it’s my favorite story-wise. R. L. Stine has come up with some pretty interesting plots and so far The Ghost Next Door is the most interesting, This one really stands out. I just don’t know how to express how much I like this one without spoilers. Maybe I’ll do a booktalk on it sometime but don’t hold your breath.

So those are my favorite and least favorite Goosebumps books of the ones I’ve read so far. Please put your favorite and/or least favorite of R. L. Stine’s books in the comments. Also if you really love one of the books in my least favorites section make sure to post why you like them and why they shouldn’t be anyone’s least favorites.

I’ve used the word “favorite” 19 times in this blog post.
Bye!

Booktalks

Furthermore – by Tahereh Mafi {Booktalk}

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Today I’ll be talking about Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi.

Before I get into spoilerish thoughts I would like to say to those who haven’t read it that Furthermore is an amazingly creative story that takes place in wonderfully magical worlds. Basicly, everything about this book is creative from the world to the characters to the story, even the chapter headings were so different than in other books. The writing style was so poetic it was almost poetry at some points.

I gave this five out of five stars on goodreads, and I put it on my favorites shelf. If you’re a fan of A Wrinkle in Time or Alice in Wonderland I definitely recommend reading this.

Cover reveiw: The cover is very beautiful, probably in my top five covers. It’s kind of busy, but it works and it gives you a good feel for the book, (I almost got it just for the cover.)

Now if you haven’t read Furthermore you should probably leave now because I’m about to get into deeper, more spoilery thoughts.

First of all, that one page prolog was awesome. Great way to start the book. The chapters in Ferenwood just put so many beautiful pictures in my head, which is good since Ferenwood is a world of bright colors and shapes.

Alice was a very interesting character. Her aversion to clothes was an interesting trait. Her power was really cool! And surprisingly powerful. That scene where Alice turned everything black to save Oliver really took this power and showed how awesome it is.

Oliver took a while to grow on me, I never disliked him but through the first half of of the book I didn’t really care for him but by the end I like him.

I was really surprised at the Surrender, for several reasons. One, I didn’t expect all the cool magical powers, it was really awesome. And two, Alice got a black card (score 0) I was sooo not expecting that! Before it went through a list of the scores 1-5, but there was never a moment, not even once, where the possibility of score 0 was mentioned until Alice failed her Surrender.

The first town Alice and Oliver go to, Slumber I think it’s called, I think was a very cool setting. The whole people having dark blue skin with golden tattoos sounds familiar to me but I’m not sure from what. Same for the only-appears-at-night thing. They were both cool elements though.

If you know me you know I’m kinda sensitive about wolves and foxes and can probably guess that I was disappointed when the paper fox turned out to be not as friendly as he first seemed. I mean I was expecting him to end up being evil (it is the world of Furthermore after all) but I was still hoping he would be a little companion to Alice and Oliver on their adventure.

I think Alice made the right choice with the doors, you know the scene where she breaks her ruler in three and gets to pick between fixing her arm, finding her dad, or saving Oliver. Saving Oliver, I think, was the right decision because finding her dad and fixing her arm were things that could be fixed in other ways. I mean they already had plans to both fix her arm and save her dad and what other ways were there to save Oliver? None that I know of.

I like the town of Left. The egg homes were really cool and also, did anyone else notice that where the eggs come from is never specified? Mysterious. The whole time in Left I was going back and forth from “maybe these are the nice people in Furthermore?” and “These people can’t be trusted!”

When we first meet Isal I pictured her as something from mysterious Japanese lore. Them stepping into the paintings was cool, and I was definitely not expecting the painter to turn out to be Alice’s dad, that really caught me off guard. It was a kinda interesting way to find him but I found it to be a pretty abrupt ending, especially with how they got back to Ferenwood. I was thinking “now are they going to go on some big adventure back through Furthermore? Oh yah, Oliver has a door.” It made sense but again it felt a little abrupt.

The scene with Alice and her dad reuniting with the mom was very heart-warming and sweet. I like the way that was done with Alice getting her moment with her mom and then her dad getting his moment. Very nice. And then Oliver pops up, which was nice since that conversation, in my opinion, really drove home the point that they were now friends and the whole adventure in Furthermore wasn’t just a temporary alliance.

I love that the black 0 score card ended up being a you-get-to-try-again-next-year thing. It was a really great, heart-warming happy ending!

That’s all my thoughts on Furthermore. Please put your opinion of it in the comments below as well as a book recommendation for Furthermore fans, such as myself.

That’s all today.

Bye!

Rap Ups & TBRs

September Rap Up 2016

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Today I’m going to talk about the books I finished this September.

The first book I finished is “Passenger” by Alexandra Bracken. I gave this three out of five stars on Goodreads. This is the first book in a duology if I’m right. It’s about a girl named Etta and a boy named Nicolas (I don’t think I spelled his name right) who have to travel through time to find something. The plot was very interesting and the action was great, but there were some romantic parts that were a little too much and slowed down the progression. One paragraph is more than enough to describe a kiss. and I also had to lose a star for bad language.

The next book I finished is “I Survived: The Attacks of 9/11” by Lauren Tarshis. I gave this book five out of five stars on Goodreads. This is historical fiction that follows a boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the tittle is pretty self explanatory. The “I Survived” books are so good and they make you see just how horrible these events were to live through and that there not some random events you read about in bland history books. By the way, I read this book on September 11th. :]

The third book is actually the Werefox bookclub pick for the month of September and it is “Furthermore” by Tahereh Mafi. I definitely gave this five stars as well as put it on my favorites shelf. In this book a girl named Alice travels through the dangerous land of Furthermore in order to find her father. It was kind of like Alice in Wonderland meets A Wrinkle in Time and I loved it!

This next one is a re-read and it is “Savvy” by Ingrid Law. If you know me, I’m not big on re-reading books so you know I like this one A LOT! I gave it five stars obviously. It’s about a family of people who, on their 13th birthday get a savvy Which is kind of like a superpower. That is a very, very basic idea of what the book is about. If you want to learn more about the plot I recommend looking it up or clicking my link.

Tell your favorite book you read this month in the comments.