Month: April 2015

A Review By My Students: Number the Stars

Posted April 15, 2015 in Reading, Review / 2 Comments

A Review By My Students: Number the StarsNumber the Stars by Lois Lowry
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell (1989)
Paperback (137 pages)
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2015 Alphabet Soup, 2015 Re-Reading, Read 2015

Synopsis

Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It’s now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching through town. When the Jews of Denmark are “relocated”. Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family. Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to save Ellen’s life.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Inspiring Quotes from Books

Posted April 14, 2015 in Reading / 22 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week’s list is the Top Ten Inspiring Quotes from Books. I haven’t gotten into the habit of copying down quotes. I really want to but I’m not quite there yet. So, the following quotes are either from books I have read recently or books I have read multiple times and am very familiar with. And they might not all be “inspiring.” 🙂

A Little PrincessSunlight and ShadowSeven Revolutions
The Girl Death Left BehindSpelledHarry Potter and the Deathly HallowsAnne of Green Gables
Green RiderA College of MagicsGrave Mercy
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Review: Shadow and Bone – Good vs Evil… and Russian!

Posted April 13, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Shadow and Bone – Good vs Evil… and Russian!Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Series: The Grisha Trilogy #1
Publisher: Square Fish (2012)
Paperback (372 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Also by this author: Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising, Six of Crows
Also in this series: Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.
Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.
Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.

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Review: Moonlands – Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Posted April 9, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Moonlands – Things Aren’t Always What They SeemMoonlands by Steven Savile
Series: Moonlands #1
Publisher: CreateSpace (2015)
eARC (484 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Ashley Hawthorne thinks of herself as the Cuckoo Girl. No matter where she is it feels like she doesn’t quite belong.
Everything changes when her eccentric aunt, Elspeth Grimm, leaves her the key to a safety deposit box in a bank that was destroyed during the Blitz. That box contains the first part of her true inheritance: an umbrella, a battered old notebook, a pair of aviator’s goggles and a locket. Each of these gifts is a unique part of who she really is.
Elspeth is a Grimm, a descendent of the brothers who purged this world of monsters by trapping them within the Concord. She is the Oracle. A keeper of all the knowledge we have amassed about the creatures of the Fae and other worlds. And someone intent on destroying the Concord has murdered her!
When Ashley looks through the goggles that night she sees curious creatures on the roof of the house across the street watching her. To the naked eye they look like crows but they are not. It is the first glimpse of the other place—the place where she will finally belong.
The journal is crammed full of things, but there’s no actual writing in it. Ash decides she’s going to use the book as a journal, and begins the first entry:
My name is Ashley Hawthorne. The ink fades so she writes it again. My name is Ashley Hawthorne. Again the ink fades. She tries again and again until the ink scratches out an entirely different first line: That is not who you are!

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