top 5 wednesday // top hunger games moments (Spoilers)

Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads Group created by Gingerreadslainey. She also has a Youtube account! You should definitely check her out, if you haven't already. I did my first Youtube video for Top 5 Wednesday last week and haven't been able to get to this week's yet. But I do want to get back into regularly updating my blog, so I'm going to share this one right now. Hopefully I will soon get to film this week's topic!

My Top 5 Hunger Games Moments:

5.) The Scene where Peeta announces in Catching Fire that Katniss is pregnant. I just love Peeta, and Cesar Flickerman's reaction. And the crowd. And Katniss after the fact. It's a funny scene, and I remember laughing out loud in the theaters when I saw it. 

4.) Katniss' episode after the Quarter Quell announcement where she withdraws into her house and just hides in the closet for days or however long it was, I found the truth and honesty in that reaction to be quite breathtaking. I really do like how honest a character Katniss is in dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I love her brokenness and her humanity amidst all of the war and horribleness around her. 

3.) End of The Hunger Games AKA The Berries AKA Together? Together. Nuff Said. 

2.) Katniss Honors Rue.  All the tears. 

1.) I Volunteer! I Volunteer as Tribute.  Seriously? Even the trailer for The Hunger Games made me cry. I love these books and movies. Ugh. So much. I have to re-read them soon.

Well, that's my first Top 5 Wednesday. I hope you enjoyed and I hope you come back again.

What's your favorite top 5 Hunger Games moments?

throne of glass // sarah j. maas

Title:  Throne of Glass

Author:  Sarah J. Maas

Ideal Age Range:  Young Adult

Mass Market Paperback:  416 Pages

Blurb:  After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king's council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom.

Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilirating. But she's bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her... but it's the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead... quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

Rating:(★★★) Overall, I feel like the last one hundred or so pages made up for the first part of this book. I think I might have outgrown my love for Young Adult fantasy books. It’s totally possible that the immature love and story lines that include tropes like a love triangle just don’t float my boat anymore.

In general I enjoyed reading this book. It was easy to read and pretty fast paced. I thought the Celaena wasn’t a believable assassin, but I don’t know any real assassins so, what do I know about what assassins are like? I didn’t like the love triangle, it’s t a tired story arc. Why can’t it be a love rectangle sometimes?

It wasn’t amazing, but I liked it.

Quotes: “No. I can survive well enough on my own— if given the proper reading material.”

fight club // chuck palahniuk

Title:  Fight Club

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Ideal Age Range: Adult

Mass Market Paperback: 218 pages

Copyright Date:  1996

Blurb:

 The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

The third rule about fight club is two men per fight.

The fourth rule about fight club is one fight at a time.

The fifth rule about fight club is no shoes, no shirts in the fight.

The sixth rule about fight club is the fights go on as long as they have to.

My Rating (★★★★):

I liked Fight Club. I loved the writing style. I loved it’s fast pace. The jumpy writing style didn’t even bother me. It was something different for me to read, outside of my normal reading style.

The characters were all unlikable, human characters. I hate the idea of anarchy and chaos, so the story wasn’t that great to me, well, it was a fine story, I just don’t like those things so they make me uncomfortable. Overall though, I thought it was great!

I feel like I need to watch the movie again now.  J

a husband of her own // brenda novak

Title:  A Husband of Her Own

Author: Brenda Novak

Ideal Age Range: Adult

Mass Market Paperback: 298 pages

Copyright Date:  May 2003

Blurb:

 Who’s going to win the battle of Dundee, Idaho?

The town’s bad girl or its favorite son?

Rebecca Wells desperately wants to overcome her reputation. She’s finally trying to put an end to her twenty-four-year rivalry with the perfect Josh Hill, a rivalry that began when she was a kid and the Hills moved in across the street. Great-looking, popular, a successful horse rancher, Josh is Dundee’s golden boy- and the son her father always wanted.

But even when her father insists they call a truce, it’s hard for Rebecca to drop her resentment of Josh. She refuses to acknowledge that she feels more for him than she’s ever let on. The man she loves to hate is also the man she’d hate to love!

My Rating (★★★★):

I don’t usually read Harlequin Superromances. If I read a romance, it is normally a Regency romance and the author is usually Eloisa James or Julia Quinn. (They’re my favorite Romance authors) But we were having a garage sale, and A Husband of Her Own was one of the books that we were trying to sell. I just happened to pick it up, and started reading the first few pages and never stopped.

It was a fun read. It got me intrigued and I love the rivalry aspect. The characters’ chemistry was pretty undeniable (that’s always a nice thing). I thought the story was funny and easy. I didn’t have to struggle through any of it, which, after A Game of Thrones, I really needed.

It was definitely a good, easy and exciting read. I might read more of the series, and I might read more of Brenda Novak.

a game of thrones // george r. r. martin

Title:  A Game of Thrones

Author: George R. R. Martin

Ideal Age Range: Adult

Mass Market Paperback: 835 pages

Copyright Date:  March 1996

Blurb: In A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer.  Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere.

In a land where summers cans last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the North of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

My Rating (★★★):

Let me start my review off with saying: It took my over a year to read this book! I honestly read it because everyone loves it. I have to say, I hated and dreaded reading it most of the time (I finished 3 other books while I was trying to finish this book), with an exception: The last 200 pages.

If A Game of Thrones was ALL like the last two hundred pages, I would have loved it. As it is/was I only liked it, and that is only because of that last 25% of the book. The last quarter of the book is where the action was, after all the world building and such was done, the battles commenced and all the drama happened.

I hated almost every character save for a few. I’m not sure if that’s the kind of “caring” for the characters that authors normally go for, but it sure made those characters human. I liked the Daenerys story arc, Jon Snow and Robb Stark the best. With a special mention to the Tyrion arc.

I am on the fence still if I will ever continue the series. It literally made me want to quit reading it for a year. A YEAR. Anyway, that’s about all I have to say about it.  Oh no. Wait! I have one more thing. I am not one to appreciate OVER descriptive prose, and he certainly loves to describe what each and every lord is wearing. That’s just not necessary, in my opinion.

And that is all. Finally. Done.  HUZZAH!

you never even said goodbye

Dear Readers,

I have been an awful blogger for quite sometime, well, when it comes to reading and reviewing books anyway. I've been keeping up my private online journal but that's not the same is it? Not really.

I have a good reason for my hiatus. Three good reasons, actually. And I'll show them to you.

These three troublemakers are my sons. They are also the reason that I have been having an awful time reading lately. Not that I haven't been reading. I have been, but just not much. My goal this year is to read 12 books! I mean, that's not that many when you really think about it. One a month? I used to be able to read a book every two days at the very least.  But having kids really kills your attention span, I have found.

I do think that as I get more time to myself that I will be trying to continue to post and review here. I kind of feel like my reviews aren't all that important as I'm not usually reading super de duper popular up and coming novels that were just released. I read what I want to and then share my opinion on them. And it makes me happy.

And that is what is important. I get some writing done, some reading done and it makes me feel productive. I am also hoping to re-start my Youtube channel, but I have to work that out because my Youtube account is linked to my other email and it's just a mess right now. There's actually no videos attached to my Demure Connoisseur email, it's linked to my personal email and I find that a little irritating to the OCD nature that rears it's head on occasion.

I'm sure you understand? No? Well, maybe someday. :)

Okay, well, I'm going to try to work out my Youtube account here, and maybe read some more of A Game of Thrones by G.R.R. Martin (do you see how far behind the times I am?).  If you have any other "behind the times" recommendations, send them my way, I'll add them to my towering To Be Read pile.

Thanks for sticking with me lovelies,

Stacy