August Reading + Official Announcement!

August is already halfway done! So many things happened so far and it just went past me.  Even keeping track with my calender wasn’t quite enough.

However, if you did check out my previous recap for July! I had some special plans right after I finished A Game of Thrones.

I indeed did finish it a few day ago. So lets do a little review before giving you this official announcement 🙂

A GAME OF THRONES

By: George R.R. Martin

Its been a while since I’ve read an 800+ page book.  Lets say Harry Potter long ago.  Nowadays I stick to smaller, easier and quicker reads. My brain just isn’t the way it was before and as much as I like fantasy worlds, some don’t quite work for me.  For example, I can appreciate the beauty of Lord of the Rings trilogy in movies but reading those novels were a chore.  It would take me half a year to finish one novel if not a year. The Hobbit read very differently though.  However, we are not here to discuss that.  Its merely an example.

A Game of Thrones is a long read and along the way, I truly felt like giving up.  What I liked about it was the order it had.  With the amount of characters, it gave the readers a chance to focus on a few.  Some characters had more notable stories with more memorable characteristics whereas others didn’t. When the book first started, learning about everyone was fun but once it was hitting a certain chunk in the middle, save for a few characters, I wanted to fall asleep over and over again.  It could be that I was just having less energy than usual from all the late nights at Fantasia but I still hold true that some characters only had their stories built up in the first one and really amounted to nothing much at the end.  However, once we enter in to the last 200 pages or so, things started getting interesting again.  We actually see “a game of thrones” emerging and it builds up to a pretty fantastic ending that has me wanting to see what happens next.

Maybe for some of you who have seen the show (which is a good group of you, I think), you can tell me if in fact, Catelyn, Tyrion, Eddard and Daenarys actually has as great a storyline and Jon actually gets a better one than the one in the book.  I can see everything in this book turning into the success the series has achieved because its ripe for that sort of media 🙂

Regardless, I’m happy thats done!

If you do want to read a more positive and detailed review of this book, Zoe at The Sporadic Chronicles of a Beginner Blogger  has written a lovely review for it right HERE!

NOW FOR THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

I’ve been giving a lot of spotlight to movies, especially with the last review of Fantasia Film Festival coming up very soon (probably later today).  I’m a bit behind with everything else but I think taking a little refreshing break for a book month is good.  I’ve had a bunch of novels sitting in my e-reader from independent writers from the bloggers among us.  Plus, I’ve had some writers reach out to me to review their books in the last few months which I have agreed to do but never actually got around to it.  I’m feeling extremely horrible about that so I need to remedy it with spending the next month or so, lets say till the end of September reading only these books.  I’ll write a full post as a review for each one because as much as I love established writers, some of these authors have written some of the best books I’ve read in the last few years.  I’m pretty excited about it.

I was supposed to do my Recommendations month over here for August but we’ll change things up a little.  For the rest of August, I’ll be focusing on books by independent writers.  No worries, I still have like 20 movies review backlogged to write up so those will still go up gradually.  In September, I’ll be back with Recommendations for both movies and books. At least thats the plan.  My list is endless since a lot of you have given me so many movie ideas in the comments you’ve left me since I’ve started blogging and I’ve gathered a good bunch now.

I’m pretty happy about this! If you or someone you know has written a novel that you’d like me to check out, just email me or comment below and I’ll go get myself a copy.  I’d be glad to give it a read. I’m sure I can fit it in within the next month and a half. 🙂

July Reading Recap!

I’m a bit more back on track now! At least book recaps are on time, right? Well, relatively! Confession time: I almost forgot to do this one…

As I’m working hard to finish up the Fantasia Festival reviews, I’m working hard on getting things back in a certain system on the blog. Enough of my rambling, lets move on…

Its been a good run for reading in July up until the last one right now thats taking me FOREVER to read, I’ll tell you which book it is at the end 😉

If I Stay by Gayle Foreman

Mia is a teenage girl who goes through a day of her life following an accident which takes the life of her family.  She relives the scattered moments of the past while seeing how her family, boyfriend and close friends deal with her endangered situation.

I really wanted to fall in love with this book.  It has a great premise and the setup of the whole book was pretty special.  Its a countdown of the hours as she goes through her life in the back seat.  She’s in between life and death and she gains clarity of what’s happened in the past and how everyone reacts to her. Its a lesson about appreciating the little things in life before its too late and at the same time, facing life courageously.  The only problem was that, as well as the story starts, I started losing a connection with  Mia as the story went along in the middle but what does redeem itself is the ending few hours before she makes a decision and through her eyes, we get witness the important people in her life.

If I Stay is set to be released in theatres a little bit.  I can’t remember if its in August or September.  I’m still debating whether I will go see this.

The Red Pole of Macau (Ava Lee #4) by Ian Hamilton

In this 4th book of the Ava Lee series, we follow Ava as she heads over to Hong Kong to help her half brother and his partner deal with a business transaction gone bad over in Macau.  Much to their surprise, the Macau side is lead by a powerful and ruthless triad society leader.  Going solo this time for the first time since the start of this series, Ava is not only about business but personal stakes are involved when she is also acting to protect her family.

Up till now, this one has to be my favorite Ava Lee novel.  The fact that she’s not flying around or even engaging in her normal forensic accounting analysis is beside the point because for once, I felt like I was getting closer to understanding Ava a little more and this case itself was exciting and adrenaline pumping action all the way through.  An awesome page-turner!

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Thomas wakes up in a lift with strange boys surrounding him.  Everyone arrived the same way and only remember their names.  They are in what they call The Glades.  Locked in at night but surrounded by a maze that constantly change.  The maze runners go out everyday hoping to find a way out while they are all assigned jobs to keep the Glades functioning.  Except Thomas’s arrival triggered the arrival of a girl, in turn causing major changes that challenge their survival.

The Maze Runner was a pleasant surprise.  The whole story is fast-paced and intense.  As Thomas searches for a way to escape from the maze with the others, they also are challenged with avoiding being hunted.  There are secrets he has to keep and memories that he tries to find.  As things flip around, the only thing we will worry about is how they will not die in the process. Plus, the ending was totally kick-ass.

The Maze Runner is due to be in theatres in September and as much as I worry that it might be not a good adaptation, I have high hopes that if done right, they might have a great franchise on their hands.  Its has the right material to be a hit, the question now is whether it delivers.

OVERALL…

I didn’t read too much in July and that has to do with this book below:

Thats right, my lovelies! A Game of Thrones is killing me.  Its not boring just crazy long at 835 pages.  I’m only at 65% and I’m starting to wonder when I’ll lose track of the events going on.  Still, I’m soldiering on because its not a bad novel.

After this, I have a little special something planned for the blog related to reading.  Every section has had their time to shine and now its time for a Reading month.  Not just any reading month but one where I’m going to flip through all those independent authors here on the blogosphere that I’ve backlogged and stored on my tablet and I’m going to work on reading as much as I can in a month. A few have reached out to me over the last few months and with everything going on, I never got around to reading it.  Here’s my way to repay everyone 🙂 Better late than never, right?

What have you been reading? Have you read any of these novels?