Top Ten and Teaser Tuesday (2)

Top Ten Books That Tackle Tough Issues

1. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
- Anorexia

2. Crank Series by Ellen Hopkins
-Drugs

3. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
-Rape

4. Night by Elie Wiesel
-The author's account of the Holocaust.

5. Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
-Suicide

6. There Are No Children Here by Alex Katlowitz
-A true story about two brothers growing up
on Chicago's West Side.

7. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
-Grief/Loss

8. Push (Precious) by Sapphire
-Rape/Incest

9. Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
-Abusive relationship and drugs

10. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
-Racism

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read, open to a random page, and share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!

Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.

My Teaser:

  

"In theory, when you're done with training, you should be able to kick a hole in a wall or knock out a moose with a single punch."

"I would never hit a moose," said Clary. "They're endangered."

-pg. 79 "City of Fallen Angles" by Cassandra Clare

 

<3 Shannon

Top Ten and Teaser Tuesday

Top Ten Books That Should Be Required Reading For Teens:

10. Shakespeare

9. Any book by Sarah Dessen

8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by: Stephen Chbosky

7. The Hunger Games by: Suzanne Collins

6. To Kill A Mockingbird by: Harper Lee

5. Speak by: Laurie Halse Anderson

4. The Giver by: Lois Lowry

3. Any book by Ellen Hopkins

2. Thirteen Reasons Why by: Jay Asher

1. Harry Potter  by: J.K. Rowling

This series is first because it is simply magnificent! J.K. Rowling manages to create a story that transcends any age group. This series will always be my favorite and I will never be ashamed to say that I have read this series!

Like Stephen King said: 

"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity." (the rest of the quote is bashing twilight and not really relevant)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read, open to a random page, and s.hare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!

Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.

My Teaser:

"Maybe he's changed his mind," Simon suggested. "you know how he is. Moody. Fickle."

"I wouldn't know. I haven't really seen him since that time I threatened to kill him with a candelabra. He took it well, though. Didn't flinch."
"Fantastic," Simon says.

-pg. 11 "City of Fallen Angels" by Cassandra Clare

I kind of cheated and did more than two sentence but I'm on page 203 and this is by far my favorite quote so far and I couldn't bear the thought of not putting all of it.

<3 Shannon

Review: Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins
*Book 3 of The Crank Series

•   Reading level: Young Adult
•   Hardback: 672 pages
•   Publisher: McElderry Books
•   ISBN-10: 9781416950097
•   ISBN-13: 978-1416950097
•   Received From: Borrowed from Friend

From Goodreads: 
Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.
Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.
Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

My Thoughts: 

I have been a fan of Ellen Hopkins' books since I was 15 (so 5 years) and I was so looking forward to when the FINAL book in the Crank series was to come out. However, when I found out that it was going to be from Kristina’s children point of views I was a little disappointed. At first I had a hard time getting into the story because I didn’t know where she was going to take the plot of the story. It also felt like there was all this build up, towards the end, about the siblings being reunited and there wasn’t very much interaction between the three of them, which was a huge let down for me.

I also found myself skimming Autumn’s and Summer’s part of the story just so that I could get back to Hunter’s story. So more than once I had to make myself go back and actually read their part so I wouldn’t miss out on any information. The reason why I was doing this was because Hunter was a character in the first two books, so I was more invested in his character than I was in Autumn’s or Summer’s. I really wish she would have added another book between Glass and Fallout that dealt with the events that lead up to Kristina having Autumn and Summer. I feel like I missed a lot of information and I have a lot of questions as well.

My all time favorite thing are the newspaper clippings that update you on the characters from the first two books. I also really enjoyed the Brendan and Hunter meetings; I was wondering if that was ever going to happen and I’m happy with the way that they turned out!

I think that most of my disappointment came from the fact that I was expecting a story about Kristina and while Ellen Hopkins did answer all the major questions, she didn’t go into enough detail for me. So I am going to give this book, 5 quills because overall it was a really good book and I’m probably going to re-read it multiple times in the future.

<3 Shannon

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This is a great weekly event where everyone can keep track of the books finished last week & the books planning to read this week!

This week I read:

I finished reading the Crank Trilogy by Ellen Hopkins (Crank, Glass, and Fallout) as well as It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han (which is the 2nd book in the series).

This coming week I plan to read:

 

Finish reading City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare and Tris & Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison and start reading Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

**I am going to try and get my reviews for Fallout by Ellen Hopkins and It's Not Summer Without You posted sometime tonight/tomorrow so look for those. 

**Also The Bookish Type is having a giveaway of Love Story by Jennifer Echols (she reviewed it as well!) it ends 7/25 at 11:59 pm EST, so go check that out and enter!

<3 Shannon

Once Upon A Read-a-Thon Summary

I participate in Once Upon A Read-a-Thon which was hosted by Reading Angel, Pure Imagination, and Candace's Book Blog.
I read 1.819 pages :)! And I participated in three of the mini challenges.
1. Glass by Ellen Hopkins
2. Fallout by Ellen Hopkins
3. It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han
4. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare - I only read 200 pages from this book because I ran out of time :(!
You can see all of my updates on my personal Live Journal. I started posting my updates there before I made this blog so I am just going to leave them there and give you the link to them.
<3 Shannon