Teaser Tuesday

 

Flavius's foot catches on a metal grate over a circular opening in the floor, and my stomach contracts when I think of why a room would need a drain. The stains of human misery that must have been hosed off these white tiles...

- Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Nay's reads of 2012

I only read 24 books in 2012, so not much of a selection to choose from. From looking at the scores I gave to those books, it doesn't look like I made fantastic choices. Many were Discworld books, which kept pulling in 3/5's.

My top10 books of 2012 were:

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins - 5/5
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins - 5/5
A Place Called Here, Celia Ahern - 5/5
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins - 4/5
Life of Pi, Yann Martel - 4/5
The House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz - 4/5
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold - 4/5
Moving Pictures, Terry Pratchett - 4/5
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams - 4/5
Puppet Master, Joanne Owen - 4/5

I would readily recommend any of these books. The most surprising for me was Celia Ahern, it was my first book of hers and only read it as I needed to borrow a book as part of my Wedding Challenge. But I really enjoyed it and want to read more of her books (I have looked, but only found her new book so far, which was in hardback, and I avoid buying hardbacks if I can help it).

2012 Progress Review

My goodness. 24 books. Not even half of my ultimate goal. I just keep doing worse and worse every year! I had a few reading lags this year, which I can put down to getting married, starting a new job, finishing my level 2 college course and starting my level 3 course. But when it comes down to it, I just let time slip away, until before I know it I've not read a boook in months! But, at least I am reading, which is still better than 4 years ago when I started this.

So 2013 then. My first goal is now set to 25, and I shall up it to 30 and so on if I ever get that far. I went on a book buying spree recently, and have a few books I should be able to get through easy enough. Saying that though, starting tomorrow I have a lot of college work to do, plus a job application, so I won't be off to the best of starts! But if I can just read a few chapters a night before bed, it'll be better than nothing at all.

Blogging wise, I shall go on as before. I shall however be stopping the Hogwarts challenge as I didn't really get much out of it. I will also stop the Mammoth Books Challenge - it's too difficult to work out as different editions have different numbers of pages. I will continue the 50 books a year (I'll get there, one day!), and the page tally challenge, as I now have a marker to compare (8,339 pages, if you're interested). **

I do want to do something new though, to try and keep my lags to a minimum. I've found Should Be Reading by MizB, who does daily memes, which look like fun. So I will be including these in my blog, although I very much doubt it will be every week, we'll see how it goes.

Here's to 2013! Happy New Year everyone.

N x

**EDIT** I've found an interesting challenge to do over on Doing it the Open Way. You can find my progress here or over in the Reading Challenges tab.

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

Loved this book just as much as the first. There is nothing much more to say, except onwards to Book 3!

5/5

NB: Entered into the Hogwarts Reading Challenge 2012 under Defence Against the Dark Arts, as this book is about war and self defence.

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

I'm not a big fan of films being made which replace books, or films that get people reading certain books but stopping there. I also like to read books first before I watch the film, as the imagination is a powerful thing, and I like to make my own worlds up based on the words, rather than have it plugged into me.

I also hate remakes. And before reading this book I thought this was a simple remake of Battle Royale, which I love. There are similarities, but you can say that about many books or works of arts. Art influences art. Books influence books. And I didn't have to read much of this book to know that I would love it, just as I love Battle Royale, Nineteen Eighty Four, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Big Brother, even The Truman Show which has some similarities. For some unknown reason, I've not properly seen The Running Man, nor read it - this will have to be rectified.

Although it's a Young Adult book, I couldn't put The Hunger Games down, and I'm seriously looking forward to the next two books. I hope Twilight surprises me like this when I finally get around to reading those books.

5/5

NB: Entered into the Hogwarts Reading Challenge 2012 under Defence Against the Dark Arts, as this book is about war and self defence.

Zombie: An Anthology of the Undead, Christopher Golden et al

This book was a collection of enjoyable short stories about zombies and the undead. There were a couple I didn't really like, but most of them were really good, with a couple being very good. A must for any fan of the undead.

3/5

NB: Entered into the Hogwarts Reading Challenge 2012 under Defence Against the Dark Arts, because you can't get much darker than flesh eating corpses.

1 year today!

My blog is 1 year old today! Huzzah!

I'm fully aware not many, if anyone, reads this, as I don't publish it to my friends on FB or Twitter, and I don't belong to any online reading communites. But I enjoy doing it for myself, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters, right?

So, happy first birthday magavtelanata. Blow out your candles. Make a wish (you can wish for success in my 50 books challenge if you like - I need all the help I can get!).