Know Me Better: books to movies, time wasters, games

Know me Better is a meme hosted by Kathy from I Am A Reader, Not A Writer. Every week she posts 5 questions from her author interview list that the participating bloggers then answer and link to.

This week's questions are all from a top ten list.
I probably won't do ten for each though...

Things you’d rather be doing right this moment
Time wasters
Books they should make into movies
Things you wish you knew before.... (for authors the question is before you published but fill in the blank with whatever applies to you)
Games you like to play

Things you’d rather be doing right this moment
Not sit around with pain radiating all through my shoulder and down my back >.< I made a stupid movement while stretching...
I'd like start a new book but can't make up my mind about which one yet. I could also watch a movie. I should read something for a university class...

Time wasters
I first thought this was about stuff we think is a waste of time, but judging from Kathy's answers it's about stuff that eats tons of our time. So...
Tumblr. Love it, but I can get stuck on it for hours...
Twitter, though lately not so much.
Blogging in general - I love it but it takes so much time!
Organizational stuff like cleaning, bills, laundry, grocery shopping...

Books they should make into movies
I'm not necessarily a fan of books made into movies. But if a book is made into a movie, I'm not a purist - I want to movie to differ from the book and be an interpretation of it. Doesn't mean I'm always okay with the outcome.
That being said, I wouldn't mind a movie for A.G. Howard's Splintered, Kim Harrison's Hollows series (though there a TV series would work better), or maybe Holly Black's Curseworker trilogy (the cast would have to be phenomenal though). I'd like to see Daughter of Smoke and Bone as a movie but it could never do justice to the writing, so I'm opting out of that one.

Things you wish you knew before.... (for authors the question is before you published but fill in the blank with whatever applies to you)
Um... let's go with before I started blogging. I thought I knew more or less what I could expect - I'd been following quite a few blogs and lurking around for over a year before I started this blog. I knew it was time-intensive. But I was still unprepared for just how much time it takes to make a post look good, link everything, to answer comments, to keep up-to-date with what is happening, what tours are being scheduled, what books are coming out... Another thing I wish I'd known about is how long it takes me to fiddle around with my design for what little actual difference >.< Not talented here, which is why to this date I still don't have a header or blog button. Also, having a blog makes me buy even more books than ever before, which is a double-edged sword ;) But I love it! I love that I'm finally connecting with other bloggers, that authors sometimes favorite my tweets with links to reviews of their books, that I get to read books for free before they're even out!

Games you like to play
I don't know if this means video games... if so, I don't really own any. As a kid, I wasn't allowed to have a GameBoy or PlayStation or whatever, as a teen I had no money to buy anything like that, and right now it's just not a priority and I'm not used to it. I liked the Harry Potter PC games though, and I should finally continue my Alice - Madness Returns game (but I always forget I own it).
As for other games, I like playing poker every once in a while, also Jass (a Swiss card game played 2 against 2), scrabble, uno and probably a couple others I can't remember right now. I don't play often though.

Sooo... your comments on my answers? ^^' Also link back to your own post if you're participating in the meme! I'm curious :)

Stacking the Shelves: Hopeless, She Went into the Shadows of Blackbirds

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase all the books we got in the past week. Those can be bought, won, gifted, for review, borrowed, print or ebooks... no matter, just share what you got :)

This was a mostly ebooks week for me, apart from Where She Went, which I bought and read on Thursday...

Bought:

Where She Went, by Gayle Forman

Won:

ARC of In The Shadow of Blackbirds, by Cat Winters
Won from Anna from Peace, Love, Teen Fiction - THANK YOU!! :D

Ebooks:

Hopeless, by Colleen Hoover
Love & Skate, by Lila Felix
Eternal Starling, by Angela Corbett
Fairy Metal Thunder, by J.L. Bryan

I'm especially happy about In The Shadow of Blackbirds!! It's so rare that I can hold a physical ARC in my hands, and I really can't wait to read this book! But Hopeless and Love and Skate sound so awesome too ^^

What do you guys think, and what did you get this week?

Review: The Nightmare Affair, by Mindee Arnett

Release date: March 5, 2013
Publisher: Tor Teens
Format: Hardcover, 367 pages

Goodreads description:
Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder. The setting is Arkwell.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

Amazon     The Book Depository

The following review is based on a copy provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.


Review:
As soon as I read the description of The Nightmare Affair in someone’s Waiting on Wednesday post a couple months ago, I knew that I had to read it! Boarding school, magic, mystery, and Nightmares – ever since I read Sabine in Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series, I’ve been interested in that paranormal creature. And let’s face it, it’s rather rare in YA. Dusty is nothing like Sabine, but I didn’t expect her to be and I still really enjoyed the novel and the world Mindee Arnett created!

We meet Dusty when she climbs into her ex-school mate Eli’s room to feed on his dreams, as she must at determined times to keep up her energy level and magic. Who she feeds on, how long, and when is determined by The Will, a complicated spell keeping magickind’s abilities in check so that they don’t wreck havoc on the human world – believe me, with some of the nastier demon types and the vampires, you really don’t want that to happen! However, Dusty’s feeding trip goes horribly wrong when she first witnesses a horrible murder at her new school, Arkwell Academy, and is then noticed by Eli in the dream! He shouldn’t know about the Academy, and he shouldn’t notice her!

It turns out that Dusty is a dream seer and Eli is her connected partner, and the magickind senate now wants to use them to solve the murder. The thing is, with The Will keeping everyone in check, magickind shouldn’t be able to physically harm one another – so how was that girl killed? As Dusty and her friends try to solve the murder, much of what she believes to know about her family and her world is called into question… and she might just have made herself the murderer’s next target.

First off, I have to say something about the voice. The story is told in the first person from Dusty’s point of view, and while she’s plenty snarky and courageous, her voice seemed very young to me at first. More middle grade than YA. I don’t know whether I got used to it or whether it changed later in the novel, but it then felt more YA to me after a while. I liked Dusty, but sometimes I also wanted to yell at her because of some stupid decisions she took and how she thought she had to solve it all on her own. What I enjoyed about her is her resilience – she’s an outsider at Arkwell, first off because she’s the only nightmare and her mum isn’t exactly everyone’s darling, second because she’s half human. Her magic abilities manifested only about a year ago, so she’s way behind in her skills compared to her school mates and they often treat her as if she were disabled or magically deficient. That’s also why it sucks for Eli to be transferred to her school – he’s now the only one without any magic at all, and being transferred in your senior year sucks anyway.

I loved how quirky Dusty and her friends were! Her room mate and best friend is a siren. All sirens are naturally beautiful and alluring, but Selene doesn’t use this like many of her kind do – instead she protests against the sexual objectification of sirens. There’s also fairies, various shifters, demons… the world building and magic were among my favorite things in the novel! It takes a while until the workings of The Will are explained, but once that happens I got a way better understanding of the parallel world Dusty inhabits and how it interweaves with the human world. Her magic classes and some of her teachers were also awesome! And there were a lot of details I thought were really imaginative, as well as a creature that was an allusion to a poem I really like (I asked Mindee if I got it right) and to Arthurian legend.

Now I’m sure you guys want to know about the romance… Well, there is romance and also some steam-ish scenes, but it doesn’t go overboard. Also I think some people will label the constellation a love triangle, though I’m not so sure about that. No question, Dusty thinks Eli is hot, but that doesn’t mean she’s in love with him. In fact, it’s hard for them at the beginning to even be friends. On the other hand there is Paul, who is super smart, fun, and as I first thought a great match for Dusty and a help in her cause. Paul surprised me several times in the story and was also used to broach an issue I had not expected in the novel but was glad to see included. There’s chemistry with Dusty for both guys, eventually, but I’m not going to say more than that. In any case, if it is a love triangle then it isn’t your typical one, and the romance isn’t the main focus of the novel.

Something I didn’t expect was for Dusty’s mum to be so involved – parents tend to be rather absent in YA and while I liked that it was different here, I also empathized with Dusty’s annoyance at her mum’s meddling after she pretty much left her alone with her dad (they’re divorced) before she showed any Nightmare abilities. Also, her mum’s a trouble maker and at times does very suspicious things… but she’s also pretty badass ;)

Overall, I really enjoyed The Nightmare Affair. I liked the world building and characters, it was something new! The book was fun but also serious because, well… it’s about murder! I never suspected who the bad guy was. Maybe I should have, but I really didn’t see it coming! There were some minor issues with the pacing, it wasn’t as creepy as I had hoped, and I thought some of the minor characters were pretty standard, but the other aspects more than made up for it! The novel is a great debut, and I’ll definitely be reading the next book in the series!

Have you guys read The Nightmare Affair? What did you think of it? I'm especially curious about your perception of the love triangle and voice thing that I mentioned...
If you haven't read it, does it sound like something you'd enjoy? Can you maybe recommend any other books featuring Nightmares to me?

Waiting on Wednesday: Desert Tales, by Melissa Marr

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine to spotlight upcoming book releases that we're excited for.


My pick this week:

Release date: October 22, 2013
Publisher: HarperCollins
Format: Paperback, 200 pages

Goodreads description:
Return to the world of Melissa Marr’s bestselling series and discover how the events of Wicked Lovely set a different faery tale in motion….

The Mojave Desert was a million miles away from the plots and schemes of the Faerie Courts—and that’s exactly why Rika chose it as her home. The once-mortal faery retreated to the desert’s isolation after decades of carrying winter’s curse inside her body. But her seclusion—and the freedom of the desert fey—are threatened by the Summer King’s newfound strength. And when the manipulations of her trickster friend, Sionnach, thrust Rika into a new romance, she finds new power within herself—and a new desire to help Sionnach protect the desert fey and mortals alike. The time for hiding is OVER.

Originally presented as a manga series, and now available for the first time as a standalone novel, Desert Tales combines tentative romance, outward strength, and inner resolve in a faery story of desert and destiny. 


I'm so excited for this! I LOVED the Wicked Lovely series!!! I own the Desert Tales mangas and I've read the first two, but I'm still curious about how the story will change as it goes from one medium to another. And I'm just homesick for that world... already the cover design and font fit in so well with the other books!
What do you guys think of my pick? Have you read the Wicked Lovely books or the manga? And what are you highlighting this week?

Top Ten Tuesday: series I'd like to start but haven't

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week the participants post their top ten to a specific topic.

So this week's topic is about series we've been meaning to start but haven't...

and I have lots of them! Some are fairly embarrassing to admit. I'm not sure if this is the absolute top ten, but they are definitely among them...

1. Percy Jackson. I kid you not - I've seen and liked the movie but still haven't read the books. I'll have to borrow them from my friend some time...


2. The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan. Everyone keeps talking about how awesome it is, and I got a secondhand copy a while ago, but I still haven't felt like starting it...


3. Under the Never Sky, by Veronica Rossi. Never really appealed to me that much until I randomly saw the trailer on Youtube one day...


4. Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder. Definitely want to read that one soon!


5. Die For Me, by Amy Plum. The theme and setting sound great! But I'm kind of afraid to start it only to realize it's an insta-love story that follows one of the plots that have since been overdone in YA paranormals. It sounds kind of like Evermore, which I didn't like at all. But it could also be awesome... I'm on the fence.


6. Abandon, by Meg Cabot. I'm a sucker for stories about the underworld...


7. Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. Confession: It's actually on my shelf, but stupid me bought the German edition on a whim for a reason I can't remember... and I sort of hate German translations now, so I'm reluctant to start it. Maybe I'll give it to my mum and re-buy it in English or something because I really want to read it!


8. Anything by Libba Bray. I've heard such awesome things about her writing! The Diviners sounds great, as does her Gemma Doyle series...


9. Unearthly, by Cynthia Hand. I'm careful when it comes to Angel books but I always thought these sounded interesting...


10. This one is kind of a compount... Something by Kelley Armstrong, Lilith Saintcrow, or Ilona Andrews. Haven't read any of them, but I think I need to go back to the roots of Urban Fantasy and their series sound great!

I could have added a lot more here! For instance JLA's Half-Blood series, or something by Andrea Cremer (though probably not because I'm honestly not so big on werewolves), or the Vladimir Todd books, Gallagher Girls... the list is basically endless and that is very depressing.

What do you guys think of my list? Have you read any of the series, or are they on your lists too? Maybe we can give each other recommendations :)

Know me Better - books, food, movies, and I dump my bag

Know me Better is a meme hosted by Kathy from I Am A Reader, Not A Writer. Every week she posts 5 questions from her author interview list that the participating bloggers then answer and link to.

This week's questions:
Books You Are Dying to Read
Foods you wish you could eat and never gain a pound
Things you have in your purse/bag/wallet now
Movies you never want to see again
Movie you watch over and over again

Apparently this is also a top ten thing, but we'll see if I can come up with ten items for each point...

Books You Are Dying to Read
Some of these I already own, some not, some aren't even out yet:
The Eternity Cure - Julie Kagawa
the third book in Kelly Creagh's Nevermore trilogy
Clockwork Princess - Cassandra Clare
The Secret of Ella & Micha - Jessica Sorensen (I own it)
Flight - Alyssa Rose Ivy (that one too)
The Jelly Bean Crisis - Jolene Stockman (yup, that one too)
Shadow and Bone  - Leigh Bardugo
Lola and the Boy Next Door  - Stefanie Perkins
Dearly, Beloved  - Lia Habel
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black

Plus many more, and many books I wish  I could re-read...


Foods you wish you could eat and never gain a pound
My body is stupid. It gains weight from everything, so that list is much much longer than these few top items...
Bread / cereal. Sounds stupid, but sometimes I actually binge on the stuff in the worst way...
Vermicelles. In case you're wondering what the hell that is, it's a Swiss specialty, pronounced 'wear-me-cell' in English words. It's made from chestnuts and it's delicious!!! Too bad the season's already over again, but I could eat tons of it... this is what it looks like:

Underneath, there is usually meringues ^^

These mints:

Ice cream
Peas
Mashed potatoes (self-made)
Gnocchi
Zimtstern cookies
Chocolate, or Schoggi as us Swiss people say. I especially love that by Cailler, Lindt, and the Munz prügeli...  but I rarely eat it because I have no moderation. I can't just eat a piece or two.

Things you have in your purse/bag/wallet now
My bag: agenda, wallet, notepad, notebook with Oscar Wilde quotes on the bottom of every page, one of those small folded umbrellas, pens, purple gloves with little black stars on them, mirror, eyeliner, hairpins, comb, chapstick, tissues, a tiny mini-sewing kit with scissors, needles, thread and everything that used to belong to my grandma.

Movies you never want to see again
Um... I'm sure there are awful movies I'd rather not watch again, but I can't come up with anything completely dreadful right now... maybe Blair Witch Project because it was so terribly boring? (I am not joking, I was zero scared and just waiting for something interesting to happen half the time).
I also dislike all comedies that give me secondhand embarrassment. I'd watch dumb action movies over those any time - at least the fight scenes look badass.

Movie you watch over and over again
Back to the Future. The Lord of the Rings movies. Heathers. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The Breakfast Club. Matrix. Easy A. The Swedish 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' etc. movies - Noomi Rapace is forever my Lisbeth Salander! Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Sleepy Hollow. Perks of Being a Wallflower. The Crow. Memoires of a Geisha. Finding Forester... I'm sure I forgot a couple really important ones!!

Erm yeah... I might have gone a bit overboard with some lists ^^' What do you guys think? And can you come up with a couple really terrible movies?

Stacking the Shelves: in which I am grateful and stare at prettiness

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase all the books we got in the past week. Those can be bought, won, gifted, for review, borrowed, print or ebooks... no matter, just share what you got :)


This was a great week for me! I managed to mostly stay away from ebooks, some of the great bargain books I order from the Book Depository arrived, and most importantly I was accepted for The Eternity Cure on NetGalley!!! Thank you thank you thank you Harlequin!!! Weeee :D I don't think I'll be able to stay away from it very long...


For review from NetGalley:

The Eternity Cure, by Julie Kagawa
Bloodspell, by Amalie Howard


Bought books & swag I won:

 

Carrier of the Mark, by Leigh Fallon
The Poison Diaries, by Maryrose Wood (based on a concept by the Duchess of Northumberland)
Blood Rights, by Kristen Painter
Desert Tales Vol. 3 manga, by Melissa Marr

Plus some stickers for Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock that I won in a giveaway hosted by Jean from Jean Book Nerd! Thank you :)

Carrier, Poison Diaries, and Blood Rights were only around 3-5 euros each so I just couldn't resist! I've been curious about all books for a long time. And when Melissa Marr said that the Desert Tales mangas are becoming difficult to get a hold of and that she's transformed them into an upcoming novel, I headed over to Amazon.de immediately and snagged the LAST copy of Volume 3 so that I now have a complete set ^_^


Ebooks:

Sins & Needles, by Karina Halle
Ashes and Ice, by Rochelle Maya Callen

I just had to make these covers a bit bigger so that you can all appreciate their beauty!! Seriously they are among my favorites ever :) I don't think I've read any reviews for Ashes & Ice yet, but Sins & Needles has been very well-received, and it focuses on a con artist and a tattoo artist - basically an insta-buy for me ;) Both books were 99 cents on amazon when I got them at the beginning of the week...

So that's it from me :) I had a very stressful week and didn't finish a single book... I can't remember the last time when that happened o.O So I have lots of reading material now :) What do you guys think of my new books? And what did the postman make you happy with this week?

February Warp-Up: Reading Challenges (TBR-Pile, Sequels, NA)

Yup, this post is all about the challenges... and while I am overall happy with my reading, I am not as happy with my reviewing. I read tons, but I never get around to writing those darn reviews!!! To my defense, it was a very busy month at university (major deadline on Feb 15) and privately with my writing (TWO deadlines today). I even had to go on hiatus for a week.

Total books read: 9 novels, 1 novella, 2 comic books (Scott Pilgrim, yay!). It would be more but I got nothing done this week >.< Probably gonna finish one tonight and one over the weekend. In the Goodreads challenge, I've read 22 of 100, which means I'm 6 books ahead.

Reviews posted:
Masquerade, by Melissa de la Cruz
The Breakaway & Pieces, by Michelle Davidson Argyle (blog tour)
Dance of Shadows, by Yelena Black




Now on to the challenges...  

This challenge is co-hosted by several bloggers, this month's wrap-up takes place at Rachel from Fiktshun :) Just click the link to head to the post.

What I read this month:
Embrace, by Jessica Shirvington Read January 30-February 1. 
The Pledge, by Kimberly Derting Read February 7-10.
Awake At Dawn, by C.C. Hunter Read February 12-13.
Masquerade, by Melissa de la Cruz Read February 18-20. 
Pretty in Black, by Rae Hachton Finished February 23.
Opal, by Jennifer L. Armentrout Read February 20-23.

That means I have already read 15 of the 20-30 books I aimed for!! I guess I'll have to upgrade ;)
 What I regret is that Masquerade is the only one I managed to review so far :( Click to read it.

The wrap-up for the Sequel Challenge takes place at Auntie Spinelli Reads here.

After only reading one sequel in January, I did much better this month! My goal for the year is 20 books, and I've now read a total of 4. Not bad.

Here they are:
Awake At Dawn, by C.C. Hunter (February 12-13)
The Indigo Spell, by Richelle Mead (February 15-17)
Masquerade, by Melissa de la Cruz (February 18-20)

Again, I only managed to review Masquerade *sigh* You can find the link above. I really have to get better at writing reviews immediately!

 Total fail this month. ZERO. And that even though I own sooooo many on my kindle!!! :( I just never get to them because I use the kindle for my Netgalley books, and I only read one ebook and one print book simultaneously. I plan to read at least 2 or 3 in March though!!


How did you guys fare with your reading / reviewing / challenges this month? And book that I've read you want me to review in particular? Also feel free to link me to your own wrap-up post if you have one :)