Book Wish List

     Remember in elementary school, when the Schoolastic book fair would come to your school's library, and you and your classmates would make a wish list of all the wonderful books that your parents would never buy for you, nor would you ever read? Once again, I think the educational system has flip-flopped its techniques. Along with snack time, recess, nap time, and coloring, I think any high schooler could appreciate a good book fair far more than even the smartest kindergartener. That is, if the educational system would do its job and instill a love of reading in the students of this great nation, which it normally doesn't (but again, that is another rant for another blog).
     Anyways, I've decided to relive my childhood and create an extensive book wish list for my birthday. I've asked everyone to get me one thing and one thing alone: Barnes & Noble gift cards. To my surprise, compared to Borders, Books A Million, and even Amazon, Barnes & Noble has the cheapest online store (with a couple of exceptions from Amazon). Still the price tag is a little over a hundred dollars. Once for my birthday, my parents gave me a one hundred dollar gift card to Best Buy, with which I could do almost nothing, because technology hates me. This year, I'm hoping for the same, but for the ol' B&N, plus a few more from my friends. With luck, I'll be able to get them all with my gift money. If not, they're in the order that I want them. Here goes:

Wish List

The Body of Christopher Creed                          Carol Plum-Ucci

Unwind                                                               Neal Shusterman Identical                                                              Ellen Hopkins

Numbers 2: The Chaos                                       Rachel Ward

Stolen                                                                  Lucy Christopher

Everlost                                                              Neal Shusterman

Tricks                                                                  Ellen Hopkins

The Shack                                                           William P. Young

What Happened to Lani Garver (Hardcover)     Carol Plum-Ucci

Black                                                                   Ted Dekker

    

     The featured authors are Carol Plum-Ucci, Neal Shusterman, and Ellen Hopkins. I plan to get more of their books as time goes on, because Plum-Ucci and Shusterman are my favorite authors, and I haven't read Hopkins yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion she will be too. Numbers 2, Black, and Everlost are all parts of series, and soon they'll be a sequel to Chris Creed, so their suceeding volumes are on my much vauger whishlist--The Wishlist for Sometime--along with a few classics such as 1984, Brave New World, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. I already have a paperback copy of Lani, but because it's my favorite book of all time, I want a hardcover copy that I can cryogenically freeze and preserve for my children's children's children's children. And, of course, So Silver Bright, the final book in the Théâtre Illuminata trilogy by Lisa Mantchev, supercedes everything as soon as it comes out this summer.

No time, No Quitting

     A few weeks ago I posted a list of books that I wanted to read through. That was at the beginning of the semester. I managed to get through two that I'd already started fairly quickly. But now, I have two books to read for AP English, a chapter a week to read each in APUSH and Ethics, twenty problems a night from my trigonometry unit in Honors Pre-Cal, plus I started tutoring two days a week in addition to working in the toddler room at my church on Wednesday nights. My free time has shrunk tremendously, but I'm here to say that I'm not giving up.
     I'm half-way through the third book on my list, Sunshine by Robin McKinley, and unless a miracle happens, the review isn't going to be good. It's a slow read, and the most time I can spend on it is usually for fifteen minutes every morning during homeroom, assuming that I've finished all my homework from the night before and have no quizzes or tests to study for between then and lunch break.
     Lately I've been a little overwhelmed, but I still want to pursue this new found passion for reading. If you like to write, then you've probably heard a million times, "If you want to be a good writer, then read, read, read!" That used to be hard for me. I was a picky reader growing up, and it's only been in these past couple of years that I've started to enjoy the task. And lately, I've finally found books that strike my interest--I realize I've been shopping in the wrong genre all along (but that's another story). Now, that I've found my niche, I want to dive in.
     Besides, I like this idea of reviewing books, even if I don't have an audience. I've always liked analyzing and reviewing movies, TV shows, and what have you, and doing so with books is just as intriguing. Maybe I can turn it into a hobby, or even a job some day. Might as well start now. That said, if I want to make something of it, I've got to stick to it. I don't intend to give this up--for now, I'll just have to be the tortoise in the race.
     ***Speaking of niche-finding and book-reviwing, I've made the decision to switch up the order of my books a little bit. As I mentioned when I first posted my book list, I expect to recieve a fair amount of book money for my birthday, with which I plan to buy books that I've been dying for. That knowlege, combined with my disappointment and discouragement over Sunshine (which I'll explain when I review it), has prompted me to move all of my birthday books ahead of the list I've already made. Most of the ones on my reading list now are either from the discount store where I got them for the heck of it, or old books that I'd previously had no desire to finish (usually for good reason). I believe that the less time you have for reading, the more desire you need for it. Therefore, I'm going to read all the best stuff while I'm in this third-quarter-high-school-junior-year-time-crunch, so that I've got the passion to actually finish, then read the lower-quality stuff when I've got more leisure time to put up with it. I'll post the new list after this one.
     One last thing--once I've reviewed a substantial amount of books, I think I'm going to transfer them over to a new blog soley for that purpose. This probably won't happen until the summer, but now I've got it in writing, so I won't forget! I'll let you know whenever that happens. Until then, all my reviews will be here on my personal blog.