Random Musings of a Bibliophile

The Great Greene Heist  by Varian Johnson is one of those books that had a lot of excitement and promotion leading up to its release. Those books always make me wary. While I really wanted to read it, I worried about it not living up to my expectations. Well, that was a groundless worry. I LOVED this book and my only regret is I'm not teaching in the fall and won't have a roomful of MG kids to book-talk it to. Synopsis: Jackson Greene swears he's given up scheming. Then  school bully Keith Sinclair announces he's running for Student Council president, against Jackson's former friend Gaby de la Cruz. Gaby wants Jackson to stay out of it -- but he knows Keith has "connections" to the principal, which could win him the presidency no matter the vote count. So Jackson assembles a crack team:  Hashemi Larijani, tech genius. Victor Cho, bankroll. Megan Feldman, science goddess. Charlie de la Cruz, reporter. Together they devise a plan that will take down Kei...

Top Ten Tuesday  is a Meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish This week's TTT topic: Favorite Classics or Classics You Want to Read I did a favorite things list on my favorite classics once before so today I will focus on the classics I haven't read but probably should. I am not saying that I particularly "want" to read most of these. I've read most of the classics I really WANT to read.  As fun as I'm sure  these ridiculously long works of great literature are, I just want to curl in a ball and cry whenever I contemplate reading them. Can't imagine why. I'm sure they're not at all depressing.   Death on the Nile  is one of Christie's most famous, and a classic mystery novel but I can't be made to care much. I'v always preferred Sayers.  I've read A Farewell to Arms  and The Old Man and the Sea  so I figure my Hemingway quota has been met. I don't dislike Hemingway but there is really only so mu...

The Kiss of Deception by Mary Pearson is a book I looked forward to with much anticipation. I will always read a political intrigue fantasy story, even if many times they leave me dissatisfied. As I began to read, I thought this might be one of those. I almost DNFed it. In the end I'm glad I didn't because once stuff started happening, it got really good. Synopsis: In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met. On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the bri...

It is time for the Quarterly Review Round-Up where I talk about the best of the best, the one's I couldn't finish, and the adult novels I'm reading that I don't review here. Plus there's a GIVEAWAY. The DNFs (links to my reasons why-if I shared them-on Goodreads): The Falconer  by Elizabeth May The Lost Planet by Rachel Searles Royally Lost   by Angie Stanton The Things You Kiss Goodbye  by Leslie Conner Adult Books (links to reviews on Goodreads): About That Night  by Julie James Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart  by Sarah MacLean It Happened One Wedding  by Julie James A Lot Like Love  by Julie James Love Irresistibly by Julie James Sun-Kissed  by Laura Florand Old Favorites I Reread: The Thief  by Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner The Best of the Best (where the Giveaway comes in): Links to my reviews unless otherwise noted. The Castle Behind Thorns ...

My friend Shae at Shae Has Left the Room is co-hosting, along with   Beauty and the Bookshel f, a Rereading AND Shelf Sweeper event for the month of July. I participated in the Rereadathon last year and was unable to get as much in as I wanted. I'm hoping to do better this year, and love that it is combined with the Shelf Sweeper concept-reading backlist books that have been on your shelf for too long. Yay! If you want to participate, you can sign up here anytime during the month of July. So what are my goals? Well, they are really not any more specific than to read as many books that fall into these two categories as I can. There are SO MANY books I want to reread. I need to go with whatever I'm in the mood for with that. As for the Shelf Sweeper category: City in the Lake  by Rachel Neumeier and The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge are my top priorities. Then I have a lot of e-books I bought on special that need to be read.

Last year I read Kasie West's The Distance Between Us . While not perfect, I really enjoyed it. West has the sort of voice I look for in my light contemporary YA, a voice that is hard for me to define but I know when I find it. Could I be any more vague? Probably not. This voice as well as some other more concrete positives are why I looked forward to reading On the Fence which is every bit as good as I hoped.  This is a review of an ARC received from the publisher in exchange for a fair review. Synopsis: She's a tomboy. He's the boy next door… Charlie Reynolds can outrun, outscore, and outwit every boy she knows. But when it comes to being a girl, Charlie doesn't know the first thing about anything. So when she starts working at a chichi boutique to pay off a speeding ticket, she finds herself in a strange new world. To cope with the stress of her new reality, Charlie takes to spending nights chatting with her neighbor Braden through the fence between their yards...

I read Countdown  by Deborah Wiles when it came out and loved it. I loved the documentary style format (with some reservations) and the story.  I highly anticipated the release of   the companion novel,  Revolution . It was well worth waiting for and is a powerful and moving story.  Synopsis: It's 1964, and Sunny's town is being invaded.  Or at least that's what the adults of Greenwood, Mississippi are saying. All Sunny knows is that people from up north are coming to help people register to vote.  They're calling it Freedom Summer. Meanwhile, Sunny can't help but feel like her house is being invaded, too.  She has a new stepmother, a new brother, and a new sister crowding her life, giving her little room to breathe.  And things get even trickier when Sunny and her brother are caught sneaking into the local swimming pool -- where they bump into a mystery boy whose life is going to become tangled up in theirs. Revolution  chronicles ...