Top Ten Tuesday
is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of
lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists
with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!
Please note that I do not allow third party companies like DISQUS access to my blog or social media so if you use that, I can't follow you or comment on your blog or posts. Sorry!
This week is Top Ten Books of 2016. Nope, no can do. I simply cannot pick ten and tomorrow I'm posting my favourite reads of the year post so that would just be repetition. So lets look at the Top Ten successes and failures of 2016!
SUCCESS:
1) I read my 200 book goal on Goodreads. I'm up over 260 reads for the year but I'd love to read more next year.
2) Discovering just how much I love apocalypse dystopia and prepper fiction! I discovered so many great new authors like Darrell Maloney, Franklin Horton, Robert Boren, Nicholas Sansbury Smith...and I look forward to more from them next year!
3) Discovering I have the nose of a bloodhound for hunting down new authors to try, bargain books in my favourite genres and a pile of freebies!
4) Discovering just how awesome Game of Thrones is! HODOR!
5) Catching up with more book series this year than in the previous four years combined! Not that it was difficult to beat one series per year average!
6) Catching up with old book reviews! I'm not fully there but most of that pile I had at the end of last year is gone! Yea! So I have the last three months of reviews which have full notes and will be posted in the first part of 2017 and older gaps on Goodreads that I don't have notes for but intend to deal with soon. I'm getting there!
FAILURES:
1) A complete epic fail as I let my tbr soar to well over 900 books that I physically own either in paperback or ereader. *sigh*
2) Failed to get to my hoped for books read target of 300 books for the first time ever. That stupid summer slump ruined that for me but I'm still happy with my total.
3) No progress at all on losing weight this year. Grrr.
4) Getting the tbr down enough to clear space on my overflowing bookshelves. I still have piles of books sitting around the floor to break my toe on in the middle of the night...
Next week I'll be doing my entertainment goals for next year as the first topic of 2017 doesn't suit me.
One last attempt to
remain sane in the unraveling economy leaves a group of college students
changing schools and starting anew. Unfortunately, their new home isn't
any less privy to the crumbling economy. Jobs are few and far between,
grocery stores have become a war zone and safety is no longer
guaranteed. Who will survive? Who will the hostility of the depression
consume? Undone is a novel that takes a look at a few of the many
scenarios a dystopia may bring with it.
Even when there's hardly anything to be had, those with less will find the little you do possess.
My Review:
With the economy in trouble, five friends have moved away from home to a
cheaper college, sharing a house to keep costs down. As campus riots
begin and looting breaks out in town, it becomes a much more dangerous
place than they could have expected. Grabbing what they can, they
barricade themselves in and try to wait it out but locked doors will not
deter everyone...
Despite the low rating, this is not a bad
book. It was entertaining enough and quite well written but I was
frustrated by the utter stupidity of the characters in dealing with
their situation. Had they just been students, I could've understood that
but two of the five were kids of parents who were preppers yet they
seemed to know nothing. Tyrsa's father was a prepper and brought her up
to know what it was all about yet when the first hint of trouble came,
she decides they should all stay with their limited supplies instead of
getting to her dad's farm just 13 hours away. That made no sense to me
at all! Use your money on camping supplies and start walking or obtain
five bikes and get moving! She finally decides that going there is a
good idea after the nutters take charge of the streets and it's unsafe
to travel!
Other decisions were just as dumb. In the SHTF
scenario, with groups of psychos everywhere, you have to stay hidden.
Find a house out of the way that has been looted already and hide there
until you have a pla. Instead our group go back to the college campus
where the riots began and where the looters who previously attacked them
are concentrating their efforts. Oh yes that was a great idea. Kids
making dumb decisions can be forgiven but the kids of preppers should
know better than that so it just annoyed me.
The ending was also
very rushed as if the author had a time deadline to meet or wanted to
get started on a new project. It all ended too quickly without proper
development or execution so the whole thing just fizzled out in a way
that was pretty unsatisfactory for me.
Read November 2016.
If there is one thing that makes a great book even better, it is when
it has a cover that we love! The cover design is what catches the eye
as we browse through a bookstore shelf or check out the Amazon or
Goodreads recommendations. The right cover makes me look closer at a
book, to read the blurb and maybe make a purchase. A poor cover might
mean I never look at the blurb at all. This is the first in a series of
posts celebrating all those book covers I love...and why!
Welcome to the last Cover Love of 2016 and it seems like a good excuse to share with you my favourite covers from the books I've read this year. I admit that there weren't many great covers due to the amount of Indie books I read this year!
So those are the best of the year for me...picking favourites from it is hard but I love the Deacon Chalk covers by James R Tuck and Sorceress Awakening. Hopefully some great covers will be coming my way next year!
When faced with the
choice between saving Milo’s life and embracing her destiny, Libby
Sparks knew there was only one answer. Become the Destroyer. Libby is
about to learn that accepting her fate is only the first step in
figuring out what being the Destroyer truly means. Libby must reign in
and develop her talents while planning to rescue her captive army of
Ciphers from the hands of Guardians.
Rescuing the Ciphers is already
dangerous enough, but everything becomes even more precarious when
Cipher hunter, Braden, pushes his way into Libby’s life. The strange
connection they share frightens Libby, but it also pushes her to trust
him despite her better judgment. When Libby’s feelings of trust begin to
morph into something more, her relationship with Milo isn’t the only
thing tested. If she is wrong about Braden’s motives, everyone involved
in the Cipher rescue may pay the ultimate price for her mistake.
My Review:
I
loved the first book when I read it a few years ago and I find myself
wishing that I had completed the trilogy at the time instead of leaving
it this long. The reason is, at that time I loved YA dystopia and
couldn't read enough of it, the tropes didn't bother me as much and had I
read it then I might've enjoyed the book. However over the last 18
months I grew tired of the same tropes in every book I picked up and it
totally switched me off YA books in general so that now I hardly read
them. I was a bit concerned that it would affect my enjoyment of this
book and sadly I was right.
The book starts with Libby assessing
the situation and trying to learn how to contact the Ciphers to build
her army. I was hoping that the focus of the book would be on Libby
developing her powers and working with the resistance but it didn't seem
to go that way at all. We get told that she tries to contact the spirit
world and fails despite help from Milo's mother but we don't really see
it happening and she makes no progress. There is a lot of Libby sitting
about in classes but nothing about her learning anything and we don't
see Mr Walker. The closest we get to the resistance is Cipher families
leaving Face book messages of support and a kid offering help from eight
families in the local area. That was all I saw about The Destroyer side
of things in the first 80 pages which was disappointing.
Instead
it was all about the YA angst between the main characters. It is
annoying enough that Milo and Lance can't put their feeling aside to
work properly as a team. Instead they bitch and whine about each other
all the time, forcing Libby to continually tell them to behave,
reminding Lance that she won't date him again and acting like an umpire
in their petty squabbles. The two of them act like spoiled kids so it's
no real surprise that Libby isn't moving forward with any kind of plan
when her protectors spend all their time trying to outdo each other.
Milo and Lance seem to sulk all the time which is very boring and Lance
continually demands to know when Libby is with Milo and who she is
sleeping with. It is really annoying!
Yes that was bad enough but
then we get Braden deciding that he wants to help too. Of course there
is some kind of strange attraction between them which smacks of more
instaluv and looks like it could move the love triangle dynamic to a
love square which is beyond my patience. Braden is also a complete
asshat, behaving the way Lance did in the first book and making me want
to kill him. He taunts Libby by proving she isn't strong enough to make
him go away, turns up everywhere to unsettle her, and flirts non stop
with her despite her complaining it makes him uncomfortable. He is
behaving like a childish moron instead of a Guardian.
I got tired
of everyone fighting with each other and sulky love interests on every
page. I wanted to hear more about The Destroyer but I wasn't willing to
wade through all the YA angst and cliches to get to it. Disappointed as I
had high hopes for this based on book one.
Read December 2016.
As I looked at my blog plans for next year I realised that it was set up nicely to do proper themed weeks where most of the posts for 5 or 7 days relate to that theme. The plan is to take a theme and then showcase it with my new posts.
So if the theme is vampires for example, I'll have Cover Love featuring vampires, a vampire recommendations post, Retro Reads will be vampire books, a discussion post on vampires, spotlight on a vampire book that I loved and want to share, and a post about where you can grab some new vampire reads. Maybe even more! I think you get the picture! There will be a wide range of themed posts on topics like Bigfoot, Greek Gods, werewolves, Celtic myths, Henry VIII, and a ton more. So next year there will be a lot more going on than just zombies!
Hopefully even those who are not keen on a particular theme will find plenty of interest in the blog as other things will be going on as normal ie STS, Top Ten Tuesday and other memes I'm thinking of joining. But if you like the theme there will be lots to talk about with fellow fans and bloggers!
