The Reading Is My Hobby 2010 Reading Challenge

As reading is supposed to be a hobby, we want to challenge ourselves and encourage others to read more often and more importantly, to enjoy it.

The goal of this challenge is to read 52 books this year. That’s an average of 1 book a week. Seems easy enough, especially if you love to read! If you find that you don’t read 52 books this year that’s ok! And if you find that you’ve read more than the average of 1 book a week, then that’s great too! We found a reading challenge last summer to read 100 books in the year, and found that it was pretty hard especially being 6 months into the year. Seeing as we only made it half way, we thought a challenge with an easier goal would be fun, as well as most satisfactory upon completion.

There are only a few guidelines for this challenge, 1) Books must be started and finished within this year, 2010 and 2) any book except for picture books qualify. That means collections of short stories or poems as well as cookbooks count as long as they are read from start to finish (no skimming!).

If you are going to partake in this challenge, please leave us a comment with your name and a link to where your book list can be viewed (i.e. blog, Facebook note, etc.). That way other readers can get new ideas and be introduced to new authors and books. If you don’t want to share your reading that’s fine too.

Thanks for looking and happy reading. And please remember, you can read as many or few books as you like, as the ultimate purpose of this challenge is to get people to read more and to enjoy it!

~Christine & Sarah

The Van Alen Legacy

The third book that I read for the RIP IV Challenge is the newest installment of the vampire series, The Blue Bloods Saga, The Van Alen Legacy, by Melissa De La Cruz. Since this book is the fourth book in the series, its hard to write a review without spoiling the previous books.

The Blue Bloods are a group of vampires who live and rule modern day New York City and their group of rulers, the Conclave is like every other type governement who keeps things hidden and unacknowledged simply out of their own fear. The Silver Bloods, the evil vampires who hunt other vampires have come back and are attacking again, but the Conclave acts like its something else. These vampires live out their mortality by living in human bodies for cycles of life.

Again, this story revolves mostly around Schyuler but we also see part of the story from Bliss and Mimi’s perspective. Schyuler and Oliver are on the run from the Conclave. Bliss finds out more about who she is and struggles to remain true to herself. Mimi finds herself working for the Venetors and wanting to complete a higher destiny as she had back in Rome. The fight for truth continues on whether its for the community, relationship or to one’s self. Can love and goodness survive where evil, heartbreak and fear seem to rule all? The story ends with some questions answered, but more asked and new journeys to embark upon to bring peace back to their world. Their only hope is that they can somehow find the courage to follow their hearts.

I really enjoyed this book and am excited for the next book, which the inside flap says the author is working on. There is also a secret ending chapter, which you can read online, but as the author an publisher teamed up with Target, you can only get the code from books purchased there. Seeing as I bought mine from Borders and then found out about the chapter later, I went to Target to see how the code was distributed, and luckily for us, it was printed on a sticker on the cover. To read the secret ENDING chapter, go to www.bluebloodsbooks.com/target and enter the password as LEGACY. I have yet to read it as I am currently living without internet as Eli’s grandparent, who we are now living with, have yet to get it installed. I’m praying its soon! I am so behind in my reviews and have so many things I want to look at! Lol.

Well, I hope you liked this review and I hope that it will make you want to start the series from book one, which is called Blue Bloods. The second is Masquerade, and the third is Revelations. Also, I know that there was a secret chapter for Revelations, if anyone knows where you can read that one, please let me know!

Thanks for reading everyone! Again, please feel free to comment if you’ve read the book, but please stay away from spoilers and let us know what you are reading for the challenge, if anything!

Happy Reading!

~Sarah

Impossible

The second book that I chose to read for the RIP IV challenge was Impossible, by Nancy Werlin. This book is a supernatural, fantiful one about a girl named Lucy, who finds out that the women in her family have been cursed by an evil Elfin Knight so that after they give birth at the age of 18 to a baby girl and fail to complete their tasks, they go crazy. The story is based around the song, “Scarborough Fair,” by Simon and Garfunkle. And in the song, there are 3 impossible tasks that she must perform or else the curse will fall to her unborn daughter. The first one is that she has to make a shirt without any seams, the second is she has to find an acre of lane in-between the seastrand and the ocean and the third is to plow the land with a goats horn and sow it with 1 kernel of corn.

The thing that differentiates Lucy from her mother and grandmothers is that she has a loving foster family as well as the love and devotion of a boy. As Lucy and her team prepare for the tasks, she learns more about herself, her family, responsibility, love and that sometimes we do things that others might not understand because we know it’s the right thing to do. As Lucy’s due date approaches, she fears for her sanity and for her daughter and the visits from the Elfin Knight do nothing to help put her at ease and she feels more alone than ever, knowing if she confides in anyone, they will think her mad.

It was a very interesting book and story line and the addition of the folk song brings a new way at looking at song lyrics. Its also interesting, because it seems like a lot of authors these days are listing music playlists on their websites or at the back of their books as music that influenced them in writing or songs that fit certain scenes. So it was interesting to actually read a book inspired by a single song.

Please feel free to comment if you’ve read this book or to let us know what you are reading for the challenge, if you decided to join!

Happy Reading everyone!

~Sarah

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

Last night, I finished the first book that I decided to read for the RIP IV reading challenge, Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Stiefvater.  And as part of the challenge is to  post reviews on what you read, here is my first one!

The book is about a talented sixteen-year-old harpist named Deirdre and how she learns that she is a cloverhand, someone who can see faeries.  It reminded me a little bit of Wicked Lovely, but its nice to read more about the fey!  Dee meets a mysteriously handsome and charming young man named Luke Dillion who turns out to be the Faerie Queen’s gallowglass, a soulless assassin, who has been ordered to kill her.   Even though everything in her being tells her she should run away from him and that he’s trouble, she is utterly drawn to him.  She also finds out that her and her best friend, James, also a talented musician have extraordinary powers that apparently have been linked with musical genius, Dee’s being telekinetic and James being able to see the future.  Amongst all that is changing around her, she finds herself thrown into Faerie, with James and Luke right there with her.  And you know that at some point she will fall in love, but lets just hope its with the right guy.  The story ends with an obvious link to a sequel, which is supposedly supposed to come out later this Fall, and I hope it will be good.  There were a few loose ends that weren’t tied up at the end and too many unanswered questions.  Needless to say, I’m excited for the next installment!

Today I started my next book for the challenge called, Impossible, by Nancy Werlin.  Stay tuned for my review on that one!

Happy reading everyone!

Please comment on what you are reading!

~Sarah

R.I.P. IV Reading Challenge

Earlier this year, Christine and I participated in Stainless Steel Dropping's Once Upon a Time reading challenge and had a lot of fun with it!  It was probably one of the reasons that lead up to us starting this book club!  Anyways, Carl over at SSD has posted another reading challenge in time for Halloween called the R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril IV.  Here is what he says of the challenge!

"Walk this way...

Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Dark Fantasy.
Gothic.
Horror.
Supernatural.

The desire for the thrill that comes with this kind of reading drifts in on the autumn winds. You breathe it in and it takes hold of you, tempting you to late nights, book-in-hand, turning pages and starting at every unknown noise. Something wicked this way comes…"

There are different levels of the challenge that start at reading 1, 2 or 4 books from any of the listed genres.  He said that he usually starts the challenge on September 1 and has it end on October 31, but this year he started it early on August 24th.  Even though we are almost a month into the challenge, I have already read books that could qualify me for completion of the challenge, but I want to do it for real.  Also, if you feel like you can't participate because its already started, you have the entire month of October, so you have no excuse!  If you want to sign up for the challenge, click on the link above and he explains how to join.  Also, if you plan on joining, please please please leave us a comment sharing your readings with us!!! That can be another way to connect even if you don't like the books we are reading.

Here is the list of books that I've read since Aug. 24th that could count...               

*Bubbles A Broad, Sarah Strohmeyer

*Bubbles Betrothed, Sarah Strohmeyer

*Bubbles All The Way, Sarah Strohmeyer

*Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer

*The Musician's Daughter, Susanne Dunlap

... but I wanna do it right, so here is the list of books that I am thinking about reading for the challenge!

*Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice

*Lament, Maggie Stiefvater

*Thrive, Maggie Stiefvater

*The Summoning, Kelley Armstrong

*The Awakening, Kelley Armstrong

*Blood From Heaven, Bill Myers

*Prophet, Frank Peretti

I am going to try to complete "Peril The First" which is to read 4 books from any of those genres!  

I'm excited for this and I hope you guys are too!  Please feel free to join and to comment!!! Happy Reading!

~Sarah

Bubbles!!!!

The Reading is my Hobby book club is starting a new series! The series is called Bubbles by Sarah Strohmeyer . 

It seems that this series is about a woman named Bubbles Yablonsky who is a beautician-reporter-sleuth. I am excited about this series because I always love a mystery and want to solve it before the book resolves the issue. There are six books in this series so far and we will start with the first one. I look forward to all the excitement Bubbles will get herself into and I hope I can help her solve her mysteries. 

If you would like to join us feel free. Just go to your nearest library or local book store and pick up a copy of Bubbles Unbound. We, my sister and I, will be posting our thoughts and opinions on what we read and you can let us know if you agree or disagree by commenting. You may even have other thoughts that you would like to share that we don't mention. Your comments can be short and sweet or novel in length. Don't feel shy. 

~Christine

PS Even if you don't want to read this series you can still join the club. Maybe our next series will catch your interest. To join just click on the List of Members link on the left side or click here and leave a comment saying that you want to join. We will put you on the list. The more you are involved the more fun we will all have. Happy reading!

The Sweet Far Thing

Today I finished the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. I never made a post about the second book Rebel Angels by my sister did. You can read her review below. 

In The Sweet Far Thing, Gemma and her friends Felicity and Ann try to solve the mystery of the Magic of the Realms. The Realms is a magical land of good and evil and everything in between. The story depicts this place as where you go after you die before you go on to heaven or wherever else you go according the Libba Bray. 

Gemma, in all three books, has visions that direct her to solving the mystery of this magic that is within her. In this, the third book, she tries to solve the mystery of the Tree of all Souls. She has the magic of the Realms within her and she has to decide what is the best course of action, on what to do with it. Who is to be trusted who should she turn from. I think this is a good example of why you should not judge a book by its cover and that you can't always trust what is in your heart for it is the first to deceive you. There are people that she trusts that she shouldn't have trusted and people that she should have trusted that she didn't. But that is real life if you ask me. One lesson that she learns through all three books is that you can't live in the past and regret the choices that you have made but to move on to the future and make the best of what was made. 

I find that there is a bit of controversy over the ending of the series. I do agree that the third book is a bit long and that it is a bit scattered. I think that Libba shouldn't have put a limit on herself to making a trilogy and left it open to writing more. She could have split the book in two and developed more and had it less like a run on sentence but thus she has not and like I said in the last paragraph you cannot live in the past. But back to how I feel about the ending. There are parts that make me very sad. I know that my sister thinks that Bray could have done something else but I feel that the course that the book took was more to reality (granted this is a fantasy book, a fairy tale; still it left me with a feeling that that is how life is) that not everything turns out how you would hope. There is not always going to be a happy ending in real life. You will be heart broken, you will cry for days, you will be disappointed and you will loose things very dear to your heart and mind. That is life. There is  time for everything, happiness and heartache. It comes, that is the way of life. I feel that the choices that Gemma made for her life were good choices. I feel that she was true to herself and who she was as a person. I am glad that she chose to allow herself to think and not be conformed to the mold that society tries to force on you. Good job Gemma. 

Do I recommend this book? Yes, I do. Even though it could have been better I still think it is a good story. I think that if you are to read any of these books that you should read them all. It is a continuing story after. 

Happy reading

~Christine