Contest!!

Check it out here. Good luck!

Oh, and another one here.

Ah heck, I'm jumping off the bridge...

Since everyone else is doing it, I may as well, too.

The following list of books teens love, books teens should read, and books adults who serve teens should know about was compiled IN ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC MANNER and should be taken with a very large grain of salt.Instructions:
Put an "X" next to the books you've read
Put a "+" next to the books you LOVE
Put a "#" next to the books you plan on reading
Tally your "X"s at the bottom
Share with your friends!

1. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams #
2. Kit's Wilderness / David Almond #
3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie
4. Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson #
5. Feed / M.T. Anderson X
6. Flowers in the Attic / V.C. Andrews X
7. 13 Reasons Why / Jay Asher #
8. Am I Blue? / Marion Dane Bauer (editor)
9. Audrey Wait! / Robin Benway
10. Weetzie Bat / Francesca Lia Block (I may have read this one, I don't remember) #
11. Tangerine / Edward Bloor
12. Forever / Judy Blume X
13. What I Saw and How I Lied / Judy Blundell #
14. Tyrell / Coe Booth #
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Ann Brashares X
16. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray #
17. The Princess Diaries / Meg Cabot X
18. The Stranger / Albert Camus
19. Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card
20. Postcards from No Man's Land / Aidan Chambers
21. Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky #
22. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
23. Gingerbread / Rachel Cohn #
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist / Rachel Cohn and David Levithan X+
25. Artemis Fowl (series) / Eoin Colfer X
26. The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins #
27. The Midwife's Apprentice / Karen Cushman
28. The Truth About Forever / Sarah Dessen #
29. Little Brother / Cory Doctorow #
30. A Northern Light / Jennifer Donnelly #
31. Tears of a Tiger / Sharon Draper
32. The House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer X
33. Breathing Underwater / Alex Flinn #
34. Stardust / Neil Gaiman X+++++++
35. Annie on My Mind / Nancy Garden
36. What Happened to Cass McBride / Gail Giles #
37. Fat Kid Rules the World / K.L. Going #
38. Lord of the Flies / William Golding X
39. Looking for Alaska / John Green #
40. Bronx Masquerade / Nikki Grimes
41. Out of the Dust / Karen Hesse
42. Hoot / Carl Hiaasen X+
43. The Outsiders / S.E. Hinton X
44. Crank / Ellen Hopkins #
45 The First Part Last / Angela Johnson #
46. Blood and Chocolate / Annette Curtis Klause X+++
47. Arrow's Flight / Mercedes Lackey
48. Hattie Big Sky / Kirby Larson #
49. To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee X
50. Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan #
51. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / E. Lockhart #
52. The Giver / Lois Lowry X+
53. Number the Stars / Lois Lowry X
54. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie / David Lubar #
55. Inexcusable / Chris Lynch #
56. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things / Carolyn Mackler #
57. Dragonsong / Anne McCaffrey
58. White Darkness / Geraldine McCaughrean
59. Sold / Patricia McCormick
60. Jellicoe Road / Melina Marchetta #
61. Wicked Lovely / Melissa Marr #
62. Twilight / Stephenie Meyer X+
63. Dairy Queen / Catherine Murdock
64. Fallen Angels / Walter Dean Myers
65. Monster / Walter Dean Myers
66. Step From Heaven / An Na
67. Mama Day / Gloria Naylor
68. The Keys to the Kingdom (series) / Garth Nix
69. Sabriel / Garth Nix
70. Airborn / Kenneth Oppel
71. Eragon / Christopher Paolini X
72. Hatchet / Gary Paulsen X
73. Life As We Knew It / Susan Beth Pfeffer #
74. The Golden Compass / Phillip Pullman X+
75. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging / Louise Rennison X+
76. The Lightning Thief / Rick Riordan X+
77. Always Running: La Vida Loca / Luis Rodriguez
78. how i live now / Meg Rosoff #
79. Harry Potter (series) / J.K. Rowling X+++++
80. Holes / Louis Sachar X+
81. Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger
82. Push / Sapphire
83. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi
84. Unwind / Neil Shusterman #
85. Coldest Winter Ever / Sister Souljah
86. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli X+
87. Chanda's Secrets / Allan Stratton
88. Tale of One Bad Rat / Brian Talbot
89. Rats Saw God / Rob Thomas #
90. Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
91. Stuck in Neutral / Terry Trueman
92. Gossip Girl / Cecily Von Ziegesar
93. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld #
94. Every Time a Rainbow Dies / Rita Williams-Garcia
95. Pedro and Me / Judd Winick
96. Hard Love / Ellen Wittlinger #
97. American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang #
98. Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin #
99. I am the Messenger / Markus Zusak X++
100. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak #

X: 26
X+: 12
#: 35

Read: 26/100
On to-read list: 35 (Maybe 34, my count might be wrong)/100

Not bad, really.

I have a new header!!

So I spent like an hour fooling around with a collage software to try to make a header and couldn't, so I asked a friend of mine if he could help and look!! Isn't that nice? So you can all thank him for having that nice banner to look at. Okay, that's all.

New Moon and new stuff

Two things. First, to get it out of the way, I've majorly renovated my blog. I changed the background, put a background colour behind the sidebar and posts, changed the colour of links, clicked links, text in the sidebar and the default text colour. Default colour is this. Also, I'm choosing different colours to post in (which you can already see because I've spent the night changing them all.) I'm doing this colour for extra stuff like... well, this, my random rants, awards. This purple is for reviews, this red for titles of reviews because it stands out well. I think Waiting on Wednesdays will be in purple too, because... that's what I did that one in and I don't want to change anymore. The only other thing I want to do is get/make a new header. But that's pretty easy... as soon as I find a pic.

So now that that's done, New Moon news. This guy called Bronson Pelletier has been cast in it. Can we say YAY!! He's Canadian and that ROCKS!! Read about it here. And one of the reasons I'm so excited about it, besides that he's hot, is that he was on a show I liked called renegadepress.com, and it's produced by my province. (Basically, it's sorta hard to explain, why don't we let wikipedia explain for me.) So that's cool!!

If you wanna see some of renegade, check out this video.




And because I wouldn't leave you with just part one, here's part two.

Waiting On Wednesday (1)

So I've never done this before, but here it goes. Waiting on Wednesday was started by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Feast of Fools by Rachel Caine

The wait is over. Dig into the feast...
In the town of Morganville, vampires and humans live in relative peace. Student Claire Danvers has never been convinced, though—especially with the arrival of Mr. Bishop, an ancient, old-school vampire who cares nothing about harmony. What he wants from the town’s living and its dead is unthinkably sinister. It’s only at a formal ball, attended by vampires and their human dates, that Claire realizes the elaborately evil trap he’s set for Morganville.

I know this one is already out, but my library is stupid and doesn't have it, so I'm thinking about buying the whole series. We'll see!!

Lords of Misrule by Rachel Caine

In the college town of Morganville, vampires and humans coexist in (relatively) bloodless harmony. Then comes Bishop, the master vampire who threatens to abolish all order, revive the forces of the evil dead, and let chaos rule. But Bishop isn’t the only threat.

Violent black cyclone clouds hover, promising a storm of devastating proportions as student Claire Danvers and her friends prepare to defend Morganville against elements both natural and unnatural.

Also already out, but another instance of my library being stupid. On a side note, isn't the boy on the cover hot? Now there's a cover to go crazy over.

Carpe Corpus by Rachel Caine

In the small college town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace--until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He's kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it. Bishop must go to even greater lengths. He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants--the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having such a taste of power?

Summary for Carpe Corpus from here, as the amazon page doesn't have it.

Carpe Corpus is to be released June 2nd, 2009.

Key Lime Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Key Lime Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Summary (from amazon.com and changed a bit by me): The yummy eighth smalltown cozy from Fluke finds sometime sleuth Hannah Swensen, owner of the Cookie Jar in Lake Eden, Minn., judging the baking contest at the Tri-County Fair. When one of her fellow judges, home economics teacher Willa Sunquist, is murdered, Hannah determines to sniff out the killer. Was it a man from Willa's mysterious past? Or a student she flunked?

Review: I like murder mysteries. They're fun. This is one of my favourite series, one of the ones that I wait for impatiently and end up bouncing with excitement when a new one comes out. But to be honest, I'm not sure if I like them for the recipes or the books themselves. It's a cute series, and I do like them, but they aren't truffles, to use a food analogy*. They're more like cream of mushroom soup. Simple, comforting, uncomplicated. They definitely aren't John Grisham, but I've never managed to finish a Grisham novel anyways.

Conclusion: A good book, clean too, so it's appropriate for YA readers looking for something older to read, and I'll definitely keep reading these as long as the author keeps writing them. Great recipes, too, which rocks. Three and a half roses**.

*Thanks to the lovely person who helped me figure out if I was using the word analogy right.
** Thanks to the other lovely person who made me a half greyed rose.

Oh, crud... I forgot to do this...

I received the Your Blog Is Fabulous Award from Rory Wilson at Bookworm Extrordinaire, which was a total surprise. I really wasn't expecting it at all. (I forgot to do it til now, though. Whoops. lol)

Now it's my turn to do it.

Rules are: Write 5 things you are addicted to and then nominate 5 other blogs to pass this award on to!

5 Things I'm Addicted to:

1. Books - Well, is that any surprise?

2. Music - I have it playing at least half the time I'm awake, because I can never do just one thing at once or I'd get bored.

3. The internet - I spend far too much time on my laptop.

4. Candy. To quote Garfield, "Candy, candy, candy, candy." I have some blood sugar issues so I tend to eat it to keep me level, but the candy aisle can literally slow me in my tracks at the store.

5. Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. I can seriously play for four or five hours straight - which is why I don't play often.

5 blogs I Nominate For This Award:

Look at That Book

Books Make Great Lovers

Just Listen

Reviewabook123.blogspot.com

Sharon Loves Books and Cats

Congrats to everyone!!

Laina

(P.S. I'm working on a couple reviews, be patient with me, okay?)

(P.P.S. What do you all think of this colour?)