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Showing posts from October, 2012

Top Ten Kick-Ass Heroines

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish . It features a topic every week to be answered via lists. I have always loved strong heroines in novels and they are the ones that I get attached to, most often than not.  Here are my top ten favorite kick-ass heroines: 1. Hermione Granger (Harry Potter Series) - I believe that Harry and Ron would be nowhere without her. She is really smart and brave. She plans and thinks of everything!  2. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games Trilogy) - Her physical skills are obvious enough but I think her emotional strength is at par too, having survived all the deaths around her.          3. Katsa (Graceling) - With her grace, she can take down men twice her size!   4. Lyra Belaqua (His Dark Materials Trilogy) - She is a clever, adventurous, and headstrong young girl who can face armored bears! 5. Kitty Jones (Bartimaeus Trilogy) - A girl and a commoner who can hold herself against magicians and djinnis. Tough and ve

Top Ten Favorite Fantasy Authors

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish which features a weekly topic to be answered through a top ten list. The fantasy genre has always been my favorite, be it historical, urban, or high fantasy. It is the perfect escape from the hum drum of our normal lives. Anyway, let's get down to business. Here is my top ten list, in no particular order: 1. Megan Whalen Turner - She wrote The Queen's Thief series and she does political intrigue very well. I couldn't put down Queen of Attolia. 2. Jonathan Stroud - Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy is a great fantasy read about djinnis and master magicians and Old London with all its darkness and grittiness and mystery and magic, all told in the hilarious and witty voice of Bartimaeus.   3. Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is a brilliant, smart, and well-researched fictional story on the magicians of London and of magical beings like Faeries. I love the formal sort of language t

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

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Summary from Goodreads : YOUNG XING XING IS BOUND. Bound to her late father's second wife and daughter. Bound to a life of servitude as a young girl in ancient China, where a woman is valued less than livestock. Bound to be alone, with no parents to arrange for a suitable husband. Xing Xing spends her days taking care of her half sister, Wei Ping, who cannot walk because of her foot bindings, the painful tradition for girls who are fit to be married. Even so, Xing Xing is content to practice her gift for poetry and calligraphy, and to dream of a life unbound by the laws of family and society. But all of this is about to change as Stepmother, who has spent nearly all of the family's money, grows desperate to find a husband for Wei Ping. Xing Xing soon realizes that this greed and desperation may threaten not only her memories of the past, but also her dreams for the future. Bound is dubbed as a Chinese Cinderella retelling and I was afraid that putting a western story in

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

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Summary from Goodreads : What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life? Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing Since I haven't heard of the movie, Groundhog Day, up until a few minutes ago, the whole concept of being stuck in a time loop is a new idea to me, and this is what made me interested in Before I Fall. It's a Contemporary YA novel but made compelling with the added element of dying seven times over. When I started reading the first few pages of this book, I didn't think I would be into it. The main charac