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Review: Star Wars: Before the Awakening

Star Wars: Before the Awakening is really three stories one for each of the characters on its cover: Finn, Rey and Poe. This is a junior novel. Really written for 12 year-old crowd, but it is a Star Wars book the tells the story of these characters before the movie and my local library had a copy, so my decision was made for me. I grabbed this as soon as it came in. And it already has another person waiting for it. They will get their chance now as I have finished it. I loved this book and gave it four stars. It loses one star for being a little easy, written for children as it is. Maybe I shouldn’t mark it off for that since it is a junior novel, but thats just the way I am. 5 stars is perfection after all.

In this novel we find go along with Finn through some of this training and on his first real mission. I had thought the one we saw in the movie was his first, but not so. Rey’s story I don’t want to tell you about. It concerns her scavenger life before the movie. Her story is so excellent, its actually the reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5. I loved her story so much, I thought there was more the author could have done with it. Poe’s story is also good. The second best story in the book after Rey’s of course. In it Poe meets general Leia Organa Solo for the first time and goes on a very thrilling mission. If you are a Star Wars fan, young or old, you will enjoy this book!

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Incredible Cross-Sections

Incredible cross-sections is a beautiful book! Not only are all the images “incredible”, but there are short articles on every page. The articles tell you a little about each vehicle. For example, did you know that Rey built that speeder herself? Even Han’s new freighter is in this book and so are the Rathtars.

I am very glad that my library had this book. But honestly, if my kids were a little more into Star Wars I would not hesitate to buy this for $20. As it is, I don’t have the room for this and I’d be the only one looking at it. Click on the image above to see a larger version. Can you find Finn?

Review: The Stranger

This was a strange book. The Stranger (aka The Outsider) by Albert Camus is an odd book. The main character seems completely apathetic. I gave this book 3 stars. It was well written and the story was interesting, but that was the extent of it. I’m not sure what the author wanted us to take away on this novel. In trying to review this book I ran across this video review. You have to watch it.

Review: Lords of the Sith

Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp is a great book for anyone wanted to read an action packed Star Wars novel, but for those who loved the 6th movie in the Star Wars films, this is even better. It gives the blow-by-blow of an adventure that involves Darth Vader and the Emperor and there may be even a few references to the animated series Rebels in there for you fans.

Before we get to deep it is important to mention a few things. First when Disney bought the Star Wars film franchise they said all the books that had been written before their purchase don’t count. Now, these were wonderful books and I loved many of them. So they DO COUNT, but the story line will not be followed by Disney in the new movies. So, now that that has been said there is a huge vacuum that needs to be filled with new books and stories. Some of these stories will be in Rebels, some will be in other movies that are off shoots from the movie that came out in December 2015. Some of the stories will be told in books and graphic novels/comic books.

To learn what books are part of the “new cannon” the post-Disney story, the best place to look is Wookieepedia…get it? Yeah. Anyway, check the link to see what books to read if you want to fill in the gaps that the new movie left. I read Dark Disciple in 2015. This year I want to continue reading the story of Star Wars and the next book up was Lords of the Sith.

I enjoyed this book very much. There is an action scene a little more than half-way through the book that was just amazing! The foreshadowing to what fans already know lies a head is great. I don’t want to say too much more because I don’t want to spoil it. If you are a Star Wars fan and you read, the decision should already be made for you. While there are no huge revelations made in the book the story is solid and if your a Vader fan you will not be disappointed!

By the way. Paul S. Kemp, the author, is on twitter. He was nice enough to retweet some of my comments as I read the book and I recommend following him to see what he is up to.

SPOILERS BELOW:

This is a good video review that IGN did, but it does have some slight spoilers in it. If you like to go into a book without knowing anything about the story, don’t watch this. Otherwise, enjoy.

Review: The Secret History

Halfway through The Secret History by Donna Tartt I knew I was going to give this book a 5 out of 5. It is a story about a handful of students that are taught by a special professor. The professor only has this handful of students and teaches all but one or two of the students classes himself. An oddity in college. The story takes place in Vermont. The students see them self as elite as does the professor and the professor helps them see only the best in themselves.

The students take things too far. Further than you or I would think possible. There are several places where Greek is spoken but you get the just of things so it’s okay. It helps if you have read some of the Greek classics. Just when you think the book is winding down, boom! There is a surprise. Great book!

I listened to the audio edition of the book. It is read by Donna Tartt, the author. I love it when the author does the audio book themselves. You know they are reading it the way it is meant to be read. They are putting emphasis in all the right places. They do the voices of the characters as they should be and as they felt they would be. Really it’s the best thing you can get if unable to read the print version.

This book is on the BBC 100 list that I have been referring to often in my writing on this blog. So, I’m very glad I can put a line through another title. I would recommend this book to my friends. It is a great story and not slow by any means.

Review: Splendid Cities

This is one of those new adult coloring books that are very popular right now. I received Splendid Cities by Rosie Goodwin and Alice Chadwick. My oldest daughter and I have been coloring a page together. I took the right side and my daughter, 7 years-old, too the left side.

We had a great time coloring. We only ran into one problem. The center of the book, at the spine is hard to color, but I think this would be the same problem with any of these new coloring books.

Lost Ocean Cover — Lost Ocean by Johanna Basford

Lost Ocean by Johanna Basford is another one of these type of books. I hope to get this one next, however, I’m not sure I’ll be doing that for a long time as Splendid Cities is a very large book and the coloring takes a long time because of all the detail. It is calming. I remember looking for adult coloring books long before this recent trend, say 8 years ago. There really wasn’t anything on the market at that time. I’m glad we have books like these now as it gives me something more challenging to color and I get to enjoy it with my daughter.

I’m not going to count this towards my 100 books read goal for the year, it is not reading after all.

The Best Books I Read in 2015

Just as in previous years I’m writing a post about the books I read in 2015. I read 87 books in total, below is the breakdown. This year I’m adding a few metrics which I think will be interesting. Like, how much I saved by borrowing books from the library ($807.40) and what percentage of the authors I read were men (67%).

Fiction was the majority of my reading at 60%. Fantasy (20%) and Science Fiction (21%) being the largest portion of all genres. Read a few series this year, meaning I read 8 books by Holly Black (Spiderwick Chronicles), 3 from C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia), 2 from Timothy Zahn (The Thrawn Trilogy) and 2 Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson). Paperback was the least popular binding at on 17% of my reads.

Most of my books came from the library (37%). Longest audio book I listened to was Capital at 1,503 minutes (25 hours), shortest was The Hamburger: A History at 180 minutes (3 hours). Total audio listening was 11,751 minutes (196 hours, 8.2 days).

Longest book I read was Hadoop in Practice (536 pages), which was for a class and I didn’t read every page. Next was All the Light We Cannot See at (530 pages). Shortest was 30 pages, a short story called Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo. In all I read 14,560 pages.

The longest it took me to get through a book was Capital (195 days), Michelle and I listened to it in the car. Shorts books included a lot of the Spiderwick Chronicles, in all I finished 12 books the same day I started them.

I finished the most books in July (20). The most popular book (according to goodreads) I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The least was Valkyrie.

So how does this year compare to previous years? Well, I read the most I have in the past 3 years, but still not as much as 2011, when I read 96 books. That big 100 is still just out of reach. Maybe this year…

Some of my favorite books of the year were:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Dracula

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Falling Up

Tuck Everlasting

The Nixie’s Song

How Reading Changed My Life

The Wrath of Mulgarath

Siddhartha

The Field Guide

Departure

Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason

The Read-Aloud Handbook

Dark Force Rising

The Last Olympian

Shade Me Review

So I read Shade Me by Jennifer Brown. Before we get to the spoilers let me just say quickly that this is a very strong 4 on a 1-5 scale. The only reason I held back on 5 is because of a bit too much teenage angst for my liking. Although, not nearly as much as the Twilight books. Also, there were a hand full of times, that I caught myself thinking, come on Nikki really, that’s dumb, don’t do that. But this actually might be a reason to give it more stars not less because if you are talking to yourself while reading the book, its got you. Full disclosure, I entered a contest on EpicReads and was sent this book for free. It doesn’t get officially published until 1/19/16.

**Spoilers Below**

Continue reading Shade Me Review