The Book Bucket List Challenge Sign-Up Post

Hello my lovely readers, I apologize for the lack of "posts" in the last three days. I have been taking a little vacation away from my blogging duties :P However, I came by this challenge hosted by yaReads. Which is one of my favourite new blogs ( ever since they got that google follower thingie so I can actually keep up to date). So Ladies and Gentlemen, I have decided to take part in ...

The Book Bucket List Challenge

"The Book Bucket List Challenge was created to give you the chance to get to all those books that you’ve wanted to read for ages but never found the time to. Or, if you’re a reviewer like myself, it gives you the gift of free will – to read a non review book because till now you’ve had to focus only on your TBR pile."

Choose your level -
Level 1: 4 books in 2011
Level 2: 8 books in 2011
Level 3: 12 books in 2011

I'm partcipating in Level 3 to read 12 books in 2011.

Some of the books I want to read include -

- Pegasus by Robin McKinley
- My Soul to Save by Rachel Vincent ( read yesterday - not included into challenge count)
- My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent
- Dead is Not an Option by Marlene Perez
- Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr
- Hourglass by Claudia Gray
- Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
- Eyes like Stars by Lisa Mantchev
- Linger by Maggie Shiefvater
- Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick
- Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles
- Fire by Kristin Cashore
- Illusions by Aprilynne Pike

 

Most of these are sequels to books that I have read over the years but haven't had the chance to catch up since I started reviewing for publishers. So I'm making the time this year to read them all!

You can sign up for the challenge - HERE

Badass Bookie xx

Loved the Debs Event? Well, you're gonna love this...

After my 2011 Debutante event came to an end, I thought - 'Seriously, I'm going to feature 12 authors when there are like 90 more debutantes this year?' It was a shocking thought and I was determined to do something about my small contribution... and that's when I made my mind up about this brand new monthly feature called ...

What is it? A Two Day Feature on one Debutante per month. It follows the same layout as the 2011 Debutante event meaning there will be a giveaway...

 Who ? Your 2011 Debutantes / male equivalent to a Debutante which is ???? The Debutante will be featured in their month of publication.

When ? Every 15-16th of each month

Why ? Because 12 is just not enough ( although they will always hold a special spot in my heart...) Doesn't 24 sound so much better?

What you can do ? Tweet tweet! Blog it! Face book it! Grab the person next to you and tell them about it! Spread the word!

Sorry no prizes for this one ( I can just hear you all deflating, but hey isn't my undying gratitude enough?) However you can always put this on your blog -

<center><a href="http://badassbookie.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://oi53.tinypic.com/2hqbcbn.jpg" /></a></center>
 Actually it's just my new button design but...hey wouldn't you want to put one on your blog????
 Now OUR FIRST FEATURE OF THE MONTH is ...
 
 AND FOR THOSE WHO LIKE IT VERTICAL?

 WOW!!! How cool is that? I'm so sad...BUT come back on the 15th and 16th of this month!
 Badass Bookie xx

Across the Universe

Review Time! For those who don't know the 2011 Debut Author Challenge is up and running and this is my first review! Back in August I was lucky enough to receive ARC of Across the Universe by Beth Revis for review from Penguin. This was a huge deal because unlike the US we don't have alot of ARC distributions. Anyway, Beth was also one of Debutantes from by Debutante Event so you can check out her posts - HERE and HERE.

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

The Short Story ? - I don't know what to say but that this debut blew me away! Across the Universe was everything I thought it would be and so much more. It was simply beyond this world ( haha get it? My bad pun strikes again...) Refreshing, original, romantic, you should read this book.

The Long Story ? - Honestly, I'm not that big of a fan of sci-fi. I don't enjoy space travel and every time I pick one up I can only think of Buzz Lightyear and Star Wars. So when it first arrived in the mail I was still unsure whether I wanted to read it or not SO I pulled out my laptop and did a google search on the book. The keywords Romance, DYSTOPIAN and 2011 Debut convinced me that - I HAD to read this book.

I decided I wanted to read this book closer to it's release date so last week, I pulled out my ARC, put aside my prejudice against space travel, forgot abut Buzz Lightyear and Star Wars and just read this book. I read and read and read until there was no pages left and that's when I released I actually enjoyed this book.

I love books with - a) romance b) no love-triangles c) original plots and d) cute boys. Across the Universe had romance, no love - triangles, a SUPER original plot and cute boy ( singular, I think I'm in love with Elder, I'll fight Amy for him).

What's the best part of this book? The Romance for sure. It's so different from anything I have read. I can count on one hand how many times Elder and Amy even touch but the change between perspectives, giving readers a glimpse of both character's thoughts was enough for me to go 'awwww how cute'. To make it  even better there was not a single love-triangle. The biggest literacy letdown in YA fiction for me in 2010 is way to many love-triangles. Why can't we just have soul mates or true love? It makes it so much easier to read, you know it's going to be a happy ending.

Beth Revis, I salute you for your admirable courage to take Dystopian to a whole new level. What is Dystopian?  The protagonist lives in a controlling society and then rebellion happens. (  That's my 11 words description on a increasingly popular genre) However, when there's murder involved? Wow, that's when it turns from interesting to exciting.

The pace of this novel I felt was a bit slow for me, I like my novels fast paced with not a single boring moment but the excellent characterisation was enough to make it up for me. The physical and emotion characterisations of the characters couldn't have been created more perfectly. I couldn't help but admire Amy strength and courage. Nor could I help myself when I fell in love with Elder.

Across the Universe had changed my judgement about space travel novels, given romance a whole new definition and taken Dystopian to a whole new level. Addictive, romantic and to be enjoyed by all. Across the Universe is a 2011 must read. Rating 4.5/5

Badass Bookie xx

Infinite Days

Review Time! I love the rain but when the postman puts a parcel pick up slip into my mailbox instead of the parcel itself, that's when the rain gets annoying :P My copy of Infinite Days should have arrived on the 29th bu due to unexpected rain the only thing that turned up was the slip. I only got around to picking it up yesterday ....

Lenah Beaudonte is, in many ways, your average teen: the new girl at Wickham Boarding School, she struggles to fit in enough to survive and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy lacrosse captain. But Lenah also just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire queen. After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah is able to realize the dream all vampires have -- to be human again. After performing a dangerous ritual to restore her humanity, Lenah entered a century-long hibernation, leaving behind the wicked coven she ruled over and the eternal love who has helped grant her deep-seated wish.


Until, that is, Lenah draws her first natural breath in centuries at Wickham and rediscovers a human life that bears little resemblance to the one she had known. As if suddenly becoming a teenager weren’t stressful enough, each passing hour brings Lenah closer to the moment when her abandoned coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as she can. But, to do so, she must answer ominous questions: Can an ex-vampire survive in an alien time and place? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm?

The Short Story? - Wow, I can't believe I waited until 2011 to read this debut. It was absolutely amazing! I pretty sure this is one of the best if not THE best vampire novel I have read! Definitely one extraordinary debut that is bound to linger long after I finish.

The Long Story ? - I can't remember the last vampire novel that I have read and enjoyed, excluding Last Sacrifice which is more Damphir and I can never hate Adrian. I don't read many but first vampire novel that comes to mind is Kissing Coffins ( which I didn't finish). However, I truly believe that Infinite Days has renewed my faith in Vampire Fiction. I would say it is the best 2010 debut I have read this year but to be truthful it's the only debut I have read this year....

The originality of this novel is truly mind-blowing. Rebecca has managed to break all cliches about Vampire Fiction and write a novel that is a first in it's kind. Wait for it...The vampire turned human instead of the other way around. The whole concept of Vampire Fiction, in which I mean vampire/human relationship, human turns vampire to be together forever, is challenged in this novel. To reverse the whole "stereotype" of a vampire and write a novel based on that idea is truly incredible.

The novel takes an interesting perspective as it alternates between the present and the past, giving readers the opportunity to understand what Lenah was like before and after her transformation from vampire to human. I also loved the characterisation in this book, although Rhode was only a small part in the book, I fell in love with his beautiful personality. Lenah was also an intriguing character, ignorance of the modern world combined with the loss of her vampire powers gave her an appearance of harmlessness although she was anything but.

The book was pretty slow paced yet it was comfortable to read. As  much as I love a book that's packed with action. I had no objection to the leisurely pace of Infinite Days. The writing was beautiful as well, again I felt as if I was as audience and watching a series of events unfold.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Infinite Days. It was comfortable, beautiful and original. If you haven't read this book already, please do! I simply can't wait to read the sequel ;) Rating 5/5

Badass Bookie xx

My New Bookshelf!

Hey! Guess what? For my birthday/ christmas ( too close for seperate presents) my dad promised me a whole room makeover complete with new furniture, wallpaper you name it! So I was entitled to a new bookshelf!

So take a lookie -

So here's what's left of my books after I packed up anything published before 2008, put them in boxes and stored in the garage. There are a few exceptions but the majority was published in the last two years :)

How do I organise my books?

Top Shelf -

Stand - alone, first in the series and all paperback ( my entire bookshelf only consists of 7 hardbacks) Colour co-ordinated ( mostly). It's also organised by size.

Middle Shelf -

Colour co-ordinated so that the entire shelf is mainly black. The is where all my series' go. As you can see  barely any of them are completed :P As much as I try to complete a series it never happens.

 Bottom Shelf -

This is where all my hardbacks, ARCs, Signed books go. It's also the home to my books that didn't fit on the first two shleves :)

However, that's only part of the bookshelf...

That Blue Box is my Swag Box :)

Badass Bookie xx

The Body Finder

Review Time! I finally finished The Body Finder after putting it off for soooooo long! It's also the second book in the Readathon that I'm supposed to read I didn't get to finish the other two but I was still pretty happy :)

Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers.
Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.
Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved by her hope that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer . . . and becoming his prey herself

The Short Story ? - One of the best debuts of this year! I can't believe I left it to the last minute to read!!! Um, I may have suffered from a little heart attack in the last chapter because of the SHOCKER ending but really fantastic! I can't wait to read Desires of the Dead!

The Long Story ? - When I first picked up the book, I read the blurb and thought - paranormal, it can wait, nothing special. Oh, how wrong I was! Firstly, it wasn't even a paranormal, I mean sure Violet had a special ability to seek out the dead but it wasn't paranormal. It was more of a intriguing mystery and romance. Secondly, it was special. It's probably one of the few books that are really original. I mean never even thought about relating to other books special.

The Body Finder is written in third -person so more than once I got confused when it said "she" and "her". However, after all the first-person books I have read lately it was a nice change to read something that wasn't just from one person's perspective. It was refreshing to read something that was narrated! I actually prefer third-person so it was a bonus!

The writing was comfortable and simple, rich language that only authors and English teachers would have heard about was limited. I would think that the author put alot of thought into this book to make it YA friendly, nothing too complex but yet still very enjoyable.

The plot was by far the most memorable part of this book. It was original, a little but of romance added to a lot of suspense and mystery. It wasn't paranormal yet Violet had a unique ability to seek out dead things. It was all about finding dead people but it wasn't gruesome. It was ...different in a good way.

Overall, I would have to say it was one of the best debuts of 2010. It's a shame I couldn't review in the 2010 ( it really does pain me) but nevertheless, it was fantastic. Prepare yourself for the last chapter, I almost got a heart attack. The cover is also hauntingly beautiful. Rating - 5/5

PS- This review is about ..jumpy and awkward because I started writing this two days ago but never got to finish...apologies.

Badass Bookie xx

2011 Debutante Event Winners!

Hello Everyone! Sorry, about the delay!!! I know I was suppose to post this yesterday but mum and I had a Desperate Housewives Marathon which was hard to turn down because it's the best show ever! Anyway, back to winners!

Julia Karr Giveaway

Signed ARC + necklace

#392 - Logan Turner

Amy Holder Giveaway

Signed ARC + Swag

#34 - Cass

Bad Taste in Boys Giveaway

Pre-Order 

#805 - Ivy

Possession Giveaway 

Pre-Order 

#15 -  Natalie Aguirre

Dearly, Departed Giveaway

Finished Copy ( Signed)

#452 - Laura Montoro

Rival Giveaway

Pre-Order

#33 - Tiffany Dall

Across the Universe Giveaway

Signed ARC + Pin Buttons

#363- Belle Découverte

The Liar Society Giveaway

(2) Pre-Orders

#110 - Savannah Smith

#138 - Crystal Fulcher

Haven Giveaway

Pre-Order

#418 - mary ann

Unearthly

Pre-Order

#305 - A Canadian Girl

The Faerie Ring

Pre-Order

#54 - Dazzling Mage

Wither

ARC + 'Special' Swag

#247 - April X

I will be sending email very tomorrow morning, it's 10pm right now and my brain is fuzzy with all the entries I have counted. So first thing tomorrow I will be sending email! Just a quick note that Winners have 48hrs to reply after the email.

Badass Bookie xx