Read The Room: August 2015

Thursday, 27 August 2015

My 19th Birthday Giveaway!

Hello everyone! So, today is my 19th birthday *Cue balloons and confetti* and I wanted to celebrate with all of you! I love this community so much, and you've all given me so much love and appreciation that I wanted to return the favour!

So here's the deal: THREE people will win ONE of 3 prize packs! Since i've got to pay for shipping, Canada only, please! The prize packs that i've made each include one book, and one bookish candle that relates to it! So here are the prizes you can win!

Prize Pack 1: The Great Gatsby

In this prize pack, you'll win a copy of my favourite book of all time, and an Ocean Breeze, Gatsby's Shoreline Scented Candle from FromThePage on Etsy!

Prize Pack 2: Tiger Lily

Tiger Lily is one of my favourite retellings, which is one of my favourite genres, so you'll win a copy of that as well as Fairy Dust candle that smells of Honeysuckle, pear, and cotton candy!

Prize Pack 3:

I loved reading Extraordinary Means this summer, and it's by one of my favourite authors! So in this one, you'll win a BEAUTIFUL copy of Extraordinary means, and a Butterbeer scented candle, to remind you of a specific scene in this book!

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! SO, TO RECAP:

1) Each prize pack will contain (1) one paperback novel, and (1) 2oz soy candle tin
2) Everything i'm giving away here has been purchased with my own money!
3) This is a Canadian only giveaway!
4) Giveaway is open starting today, August 27th, 2015, and will close in 2 weeks on September 10th, 2015
So go ahead, and enter the Rafflecopter form down below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much, everyone for celebrating my birthday with me, and good luck!

Top Ten Books That Would Be On My Syllabus If I Taught Magical Realism 101

This topic is making me so excited for school! All my booklists have come out and I get to take classes on literature and propaganda and multiculturalism and diversity and Canadian lit and I'M SO EXCITED! And if my school offered a class on Magical Realism, you bet your ass i'd be there in a heartbeat, because magical realism is my jam. So, here is my mock syllabus!

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Incredible symbolism, and uses magic as a metaphor for the unknown. Top notch, but not Allen's best.

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Disscusses age in relation to magic, and contrasts Kate and her daughter, Devin, and their experiences with the magic of the lake. Again, not her best, but still incredible.

Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

One of my favourites. Very atmospheric, and the setting becomes its own character. Della Lee fills the archetype of the Fairy Godmother very well.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

My absolute favourite. Questions where magic is connected to certain people, situations, or places. Magic is held within small items or sentiments. Beautiful writing.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

My second favourite, but Allen's best. Combines characters who are both believers and nay-sayers, and the mix is interesting. Magical atmosphere.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

An interesting progression from Magical Realism/Urban Magicality into Fantasy.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

A magical circumstance in a world where magic does not exist in excess. And interesting look at the 'normal' people and how they come to understand and view it.

The Archived Series by Victoria Schwab

Brights to light the negatives of being magical in an urban setting.

The Caster Chronicles by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Interesting type of magic and seeing the parallels between the magical hierarchies and the urban realistic ones.

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

I mean, come on. This series not only raised a generation, but grew as its audience did. While the first book deals with magic almost exclusively, the story develops, and other aspects are added, until the audience understands the core themes of the story.

Thanks for reading guys! Leave you TTT down below!

Happy Reading!

Review: I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Book: I'll Meet You There

Author: Heather Demetrios

Publisher: Henry Colt and Co

Pages: 388 Pages

Format: ARC

Source: Raincoast Books

Where to Buy: Amazon CA, Book Depository, Chapters Indigo

Thanks to Raincoast Books for providing me with a copy of I'll Meet You There in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

I think i'm in love, guys. I really do. I've fallen head over heels for Heather Demetrios and her incredible writing. It's been a while, or it feels like it has been, since i've read a straight YA contemporary. I feel like i've been so caught up in this reading whirlwind that I was just reading whatever I could grab. And I'll Meet You There has quieted my mind, and has really made me think about what i've been reading. Because IMYT was so simple. It was so simple, and easy to read, yes, but so complex and complicated in it's characters and plot.

The plot in IMYT is basically non-existent in my mind. The plot is for Skyler to survive the summer; for her to make it through unscathed and to make sure she's not leaving any destruction behind. And that plot is so simple. It's something that all students that move away deal with. Hell, I dealt with it last year - the idea that when I leave home, I want to make sure that the hole i'm leaving is not gaping. That there is something there to fill it. And with such a simple plot, I still can't understand why it felt so hard and complex. The stakes felt as high as could be, and it felt like the climax of a fantasy novel, where the heroine is about to rush into battle to fight for her well being. Well, Skyler's our heroine, and the trailer park she calls home seemed like a battlefield at times.

Skyler and Josh have become two characters that my mind will just not forget about. They are both so human, and so flawed, and yet their redeeming qualities shine through so easily, and it's so easy to fall in love with them and root for them. And what Heather Demetrios does so well? She doesn't discredit their struggles. Skyler's struggles with her mother are treated with as much respect as Josh's struggles with the war are. Nothing is prioritized because they are both dealing with very prevalent problems. I mean, such a small thing helped this story so much, and I loved it.

This book still has me reeling, and it will 100% make an appearance on my top books of the year. I had an incredible time reading it, and it was just such a delight to read. Heather Demetrios has my heart, and after reading this? I think she'll treat it well.

5/5 Stars.

Also Josh is mine, and no one else can have him.

Waiting on Wednesday: A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

A Madness so Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

Release Date: October 6th, 2015 - Katherine Tegen Books

Grace Mae knows madness.

She keeps it locked away, along with her voice, trapped deep inside a brilliant mind that cannot forget horrific family secrets. Those secrets, along with the bulge in her belly, land her in a Boston insane asylum.

When her voice returns in a burst of violence, Grace is banished to the dark cellars, where her mind is discovered by a visiting doctor who dabbles in the new study of criminal psychology. With her keen eyes and sharp memory, Grace will make the perfect assistant at crime scenes. Escaping from Boston to the safety of an ethical Ohio asylum, Grace finds friendship and hope, hints of a life she should have had. But gruesome nights bring Grace and the doctor into the circle of a killer who stalks young women. Grace, continuing to operate under the cloak of madness, must hunt a murderer while she confronts the demons in her own past.

In this beautifully twisted historical thriller, Mindy McGinnis, acclaimed author of Not a Drop to Drink and In a Handful of Dust, explores the fine line between sanity and insanity, good and evil—and the madness that exists in all of us.

I am so excited for this one! I've never read a Mindy McGinnis book before, so i'm excited for this to be my first! And what's going to be better than reading this? Buddy reading this with some awesome BookTubers and Bloggers! Andreya from Little Yellow Bookshop, Shelly from Read Sleep Repeat, Caitlin from the YA Bookworm Blogger, and Lily from Lily's Book Blog and I are planning on doing a buddy read of this one closer to the release date, and I'm so excited!

What are you guys waiting for this week? Let me know in the comments! <3

Bout of Books 14.0 Announcement and Update Post!

Welcome to my Bout of Books 14.0 Announcement post! In this post, I'll be posting my goals for the week, and a temporary TBR!

My goal for this week is to participate in at least 2 of the Daily Challenges, and update you with my page count and books read everyday. For my own personal sanity, there will not be separate posts for each update or challenge, but instead everything will be updated on this post.

For my TBR, I hope to get through 5 books, and I only know 3 that I will for sure be reading. I really want to finish Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson, which i'm about halfway through right now. I also want to finish Somewhere There is Still A Sun by Michael Gruenbaum and Todd Hasak-Lowy, because it's an ARC and I need to have a post up soon! And lastly, I really want to read The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness. I don't want to limit myself with what books I can read, so all these books are subject to change!

Thanks for reading guys, and check back tonight for an update!

Day 1

Day one went by pretty quickly. I had spent the weekend at a friends cottage, so I had a lot of menial tasks to do that were a bit time consuming, but I still was able to finish Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson! I absolutely loved the story, the characters, and the ending was an A+ finale. I'll hopefully have a review up soon.

I know that tomorrow will be a bit of a weird reading day, because I have to work (albeit, from home). My work involves a lot of physical work, but allows me to listen to an audio book! I'm hoping to get about 7 hours of work done tomorrow, so I've picked out a 7 hour long audiobook - Positive by Paige Rawl. I've become fascinated with memoirs and nonfiction recently, so I thought that this would be a good one!

Hope your first day went well, and I'll catch up with you tomorrow! Happy reading!

Pages read: 304

Day 2

Day 2 didn't hold up all that well. For one thing, I only got 4 hours work done, which means, I didn't get through all of Positive by Paige Rawl. I've got about 3 more hours in the audiobook and I do have faith that I'm going to power through that. I've got some errands to run today, but it should be mostly chill, and relaxed. I'll do my best to update you on my Twitter, which admittedly, has really only been used as of late for screaming and fangirling about musical theatre and Newsies. Whoops.

Pages Read: 130
Pages Read in Total: 434

Day 3

Wednesday was a bit disappointing on the reading front. Although I did finish Positive by Paige Rawl (liked the story, not the audiobook), that was all read. I went to the mall with my sister and we had a grand old time, then I went to a friends house and we crafted for like, 5 hours. T'was a good day. I think i'm going to start Somewhere There is Still a Sun by Michael Gruenbaum and Todd Hasak Lowy on Thursday, and hopefully power through it. I'm also drifting towards picking up Finding Paris by Joy Preble, but hey. That could change.

Pages Read: 130
Total Pages Read: 564

Day 4

Thursday was not a good day. I was up way too late, slept in way too long, and was just a total bum yesterday. Aside from walking the dog, I didn't leave the house. And aside from Tumblr posts, I didn't read. Here's hoping the weekend will be better.

Pages Read: 0
Total Pages Read: 564

Day 5

Didn't read today.

Pages Read: 0
Total Pages Read: 564

Day 6+7

FINALLY. SOME PROGRESS! I started Somewhere There is Still a Sun by Michael Gruenbaum and Todd Hasak Lowy on Saturday and Finished it on Sunday! It was an...interesting read. I won't go into it, but you'll see a review of it in the next few weeks!

Pages Read: 384
Total Pages Read: 948

Thanks for going on this journey with me guys!