spotlight on: my favorite fall reads

Welcome to Spotlight On: a monthly feature hosted her at Stardust and Words. You can find the rest of the spotlight posts here! I did a post that is similar to this one last year, where I talked about the books that capture the spirit of Halloween for me, and I talked about this again in my TTT post last week! Now I want to talk about some books that I love to reread in the fall. Some of these are perennial favorites, and some of them are new-to-me favorites, but they all have the coziness and feeling of coming home that I associate with fall, and they are all perfect for curling up with a mug of something hot and watching the leaves swirl outside the window :)

1.The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – Swashbuckling, revenge, misty islands, and mistaken identity make this a perfect book for a fall afternoon. It's super long, so you can either power through with the help of a lot of coffee or read an abridged version. I just love how atmospheric it is.

2. Ella Enchanted – Gail Carson Levine – The perfect quick read for when you need a pick me up. I love to make a super elaborate hot chocolate and then snuggle up with this book or its (HIGHLY inferior but still a ton of fun) movie. Gail Carson Levine is one of the best writers I've ever read, and she manages to capture so much emotion and heart in all of her books. Ella Enchanted is my personal favorite, but you can't go wrong with any of her novels.

3. Inkheart – Cornelia Funke – One of my favorite books from when I was in middle school, this entire trilogy reminds me of driving through New England in October. Lovable characters, a great father daughter relationship, and traveling into all of your favorite books means that Inkheart is basically every bibliophile's dream.

4. The Princess Bride – William Goldman – Okay, who doesn't adore The Princess Bride? It is one of those classic fairy tale stories that you absolutely can't go wrong with on a fall day. It's hilarious, heartbreaking and completely engaging.

5. Entwined – Heather Dixon – A darker retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Dixon conjures up the darker side of fall with her fairy tale. I think of abandoned castles, sleeping beauty on her one-hundredth year of slumber, and dark fall nights lit only with candles.

6. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien – Do I even need to explain myself here? I don't know about you guys, but curling up in a Hobbit hole with Bilbo is the perfect way to spend October.

7. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak – save this book for the moment that you can almost feel autumn turning into winter. That is the feeling that I associate with The Book Thief. The nights are freezing but the days are still warm enough that you aren't cold, and you can see the frost on the grass early. This book is the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing that I have ever read, and I love every second of it every single time I read it.

8. Jellicoe Road – Melina Marchetta – Looking for a home, looking for your place of belonging, looking for fun, looking for a love. Long, winding paths, mysteries, pranks, making up. Jellicoe Road is haunting, captivating and so perfect for fall days.

9. Love Letters to the Dead – Ava Dellaria – The leaves are dying and falling, but they are so beautiful as they do so. That's kind of like Love Letters to the Dead. Death is something that, sometimes, like the leaves, stares us right in the face. But we have to find the beauty despite of it.

10. We Were Liars – E. Lockhart – Family secrets, first loves, mysteries, blink and you'll miss them clues, an enormous plot twist.

11. Attachments – Rainbow Rowell – Caloo, Calay! There is one scene in this book that talks about October in the best way, and that is why I always associate this book with October and fall in general. It has a homey feel to it too, like a cup of tea and your favorite movie.

12. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling – I'm not sure why it is just this particular book of the series that I always think of when I think of fall, but I always get the urge to read PoA when the weather starts changing. Maybe it is because I think the movie is beautiful in the way that it deals with the changing of seasons, or maybe it's because this was my favorite one when I was little, but something about it screams autumn to me.

13. A Little Something Different – Sandy Hall – One of those adorable warm and fuzzy contemporaries that I think is perfect for the crispest and clearest fall day. I love the alternating POVs and the fact that it takes place on a college campus just makes me think of walking to class and stomping on the falling leaves.

14. Carry On – Rainbow Rowell– Maybe this also has something to do with the on-campus/Hogwarts/school-time feeling, but I think this book is perfect for reading in the fall. It combined the sparkly brightness of a crisp fall day with the spooky darkness of the chilly fall night. Lovable characters and a little bit of magic rounds off this amazing book :)

15. First & Then – Emma Mills – football/school/first love. The ultimate fall trifecta!

16. Walk the Earth a Stranger – Rae Carson – The aesthetic of the cover combined with the gold rush era historical fiction of the plot makes this one a perfect fall read for me. It is engaging while still being subtle, and isn't in your face with its fun.

17. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Saenz – Adorable LGBT romance, finding out who you are and what you're really made of, "boys like me were made for the rain," adorable puppies. These are all of the things that you need to know about this book please read it, it is my favorite thing in the entire world.




18. Some Kind of Happiness – Claire Legrand – a haunting, moving description of depression in and for younger kids, I absolutely adore this atmospheric novel. Forests full of dangers and delights, old family secrets, houses full of relatives, friendships formed in the heat of imagination. A long sip of cold water.


19. Uprooted – Naomi Novik – a lush fairy tale retelling of a few different mashed up tales, there is darkness and dark magic as well as lovely sunlight in this one. Dragons or humans? Monsters or girls? Who to trust and who to be wary of? Magical and unconventional girls who have friendship above all. Lovely.

21. Milk and Honey  – poetry for autumn. Poems about breaking, loving, healing, becoming. Poems about the worst times and the best times, extremes that stick with you. Beautiful verse, beautiful illustrations, read it in an hour or linger for several.

What are some of your favorite fall reads?

xx
Caroline

recent cover reveals pt. 2

So I did something like this in late February, but a few really awesome covers have come out recently, so I am super excited to put them all in a post for y'all! Let me know which ones of these you're looking forward to as well.

1. The Sun is Also A Star – Nicola Yoon
release date: November 1

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.

Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.

The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?
 

2. Glitter – Aprilynne Pike
release date: October 25

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Aprilynne Pike comes a truly original new novel—Breaking Bad meets Marie Antoinette in a near-future world where the residents of Versailles live like it’s the eighteenth century and an almost-queen turns to drug dealing to save her own life.

Outside the palace of Versailles, it’s modern day. Inside, the people dress, eat, and act like it’s the eighteenth century—with the added bonus of technology to make court life lavish, privileged, and frivolous. The palace has every indulgence, but for one pretty young thing, it’s about to become a very beautiful prison.
When Danica witnesses an act of murder by the young king, her mother makes a cruel power play . . . blackmailing the king into making Dani his queen. When she turns eighteen, Dani will marry the most ruthless and dangerous man of the court. She has six months to escape her terrifying destiny. Six months to raise enough money to disappear into the real world beyond the palace gates.
Her ticket out? Glitter. A drug so powerful that a tiny pinch mixed into a pot of rouge or lip gloss can make the wearer hopelessly addicted. Addicted to a drug Dani can sell for more money than she ever dreamed.
But in Versailles, secrets are impossible to keep. And the most dangerous secret—falling for a drug dealer outside the palace walls—is one risk she has to take.
 

3. Strange the Dreamer – Laini Taylor
release date: September 27

Strange the Dreamer is the story of:

the aftermath of a war between gods and men
a mysterious city stripped of its name
a mythic hero with blood on his hands
a young librarian with a singular dream
a girl every bit as perilous as she is imperiled
alchemy and blood candy, nightmares and godspawn, moths and monsters, friendship and treachery, love and carnage.

Welcome to Weep.

 

 

 

 

4. The Author's Odyssey – Chris Colfer
release date: July

The fifth book in The Land of Stories Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Illustrated – Jim Kay

release date: October 4

Harry, Ron and Hermione have returned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for their second year. Soon the threesome are immersed in the daily round of classes. But then horrible things start happening. Harry hears evil voices. Sinister messages appear on the wall. Nothing can prepare the three friends for what happens next…











ahhh! i love a good cover :)

xx
Caroline

HAMILTON booktag

Umm, so basically, like just about everyone else in the world right now, I'm obsessed with Hamilton. If you've been living under a rock and haven't heard about it, it is a hip-hop Broadway musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton. It's one of the most amazing things to ever exist in the world, and its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, is one of my favorite people ever, and the creator of another popular show, In The Heights. When I saw that Krystianna did this tag over on her wonderful blog, Downright Dystopian, I knew that I had to do this one as well! So thank you Krystianna for the tag and also for the images of the song titles, which I am borrowing here! Here is the link to the OP of this tag.  Here we go!

I would love to be a Shadowhunter. Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series were some of the first books that I read that really got me into the online book community. They remain some of my favorites, and I love the idea that, in this world, the fantastic is just right under everyone's noses. I would want to be a Shadowhunter for sure, but just seeing vampires and werewolves and seelies and warlocks would be incredible for me. Or, taking it even further, going back to Victorian London and being a Shadowhunter there would be just as amazing.

Louis Lane from Gwenda Bond's incredible series! I read the first book over the summer, and the second one is supposed to be coming out later this year. I don't hear nearly enough praise for this book, because I think that it is wonderful, and Lois is an incredible character. She's a precocious loudmouth who can't keep her nose where it belongs, which is useful, because it gets her into all kinds of scrapes that are both exciting and rather funny. I love the idea that Lois Lane has always been incredible, and she doesn't need Clark Kent to make her so. Love this book, can't wait for the next one.

Of course, I'm going with Delilah Bard from The Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. The second novel is out next week (!!!!) so there's still time to hop on this incredible bangwagon. Lila a swashbuckling fiend who dreams of getting out of the gray doldrums of London, where she is trapped in a man's world. When she runs across Kell, a magical traveler, she sees it as her opportunity to become something more than the hand she's been dealt, and follows him into the unknown, hoping for adventure and, just maybe, a ship to fuel her escape into the unknown.

What else can I choose but the relationship in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth??? No spoilers here, if you haven't already had your heart ripped mercilessly out of your chest, but this is one of the saddest endings to a book or series that I have ever run across. I think I cried just as much the first time I read TFIOS as I did when I finished Allegiant, and that is saying something, for sure. I swear, this was the most unnecessary plot twist in the entire world, and I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact that it actually happened.

Besides King George himself, who I would pick if I could, I am going to go with basically everyone from Vicious by V.E. Schwab (her second appearance on this list, woohoo) There is a lot of gray area over who is evil and who is not, and I'm not sure there is ever even a clear answer about who we are supposed to root for, but the one thing that I do know is that everyone in this book has their sassy moments, for sure.

I thought that I saw the plot twist coming in the end of Crown of Midnight, the second book in Sarah J Maas' Throne of Glass series, but it turns out I was MISTAKEN. It took me totally by surprised, the direction that Mass took the character of Celaena, and she continued with that amazing arc through the third and fourth books. Queen of Shadows had about 15 plot twists that I totally didn't see coming, and I loved every single second of it. From the reveal moment in the second book, these books have not taken their foot off the gas.

When the fourth book came out last summer, I marathoned all of The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer. I think that these lend themselves really well to marathoning. They are middle grade, which makes them super quick and fun reads, and the world is so fun to slip into, you won't realize that you've read through two books before you reach for the third one. I would definitely recommend this series to fairy tale and MG fantasy lovers. The characters and the plot events are just wildly entertaining.

I am a huge fan of multiple POVs. I absolutely love reading from many different character's perspectives, especially if it is done right. The most recent book that I loved with multiple POVs was Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. There are six main characters in this novel, and all of them have such a distinct voice. Bardugo manages to juggle them expertly, giving them all screen time without detracting from the depth of their characters. Love love love this novel, so sad that it is only going to be a duet.

Um, duh. 

(This is spoilery, obviously)

Basically, the end of The Book Thief destroyed me, and I wish that I could go in there and make the bomb not fall, saving everyone close to Liesel, but especially Rudy. I swear to God, when Rudy died, I wanted to rip out my own hair and just cry forever, which I basically did. This book is so beautiful and heartbreaking, especially in the end, and I love it for that and also in spite of it.

If you love Hamilton and want to do this tag, please do and comment a link to your post!! I would love to see what you guys come up with! 

xx

Sunny

bookish christmas tag

Welcome to another installment of bookish Christmas here at Stardust and Words. Seeing as it is Christmas Eve Eve, I have taken it upon myself to post the Bookish Christmas Tag, which I found over at A Novel Glimpse. Take this time to reflect upon the books and bookish things that you have given and received during holidays past, and what you hope to receive in two days. Also, this will most likely be my last post for a week or so, so Happy Holidays to you all!

1. Father Christmas: Name a book you received as a child that you treasure to this day.

Probably my Harry Potter books that I received every Christmas until the seventh one came out! Though I now have three sets of those books, my battered and beaten originals are ones that I will always treasure. :) 

 

2. The Ghost of Christmas Past: Is there a book or series you like to revisit each year at Christmas time?

 Percy Jackson just is a comfortable, cozy thing to read at Christmastime for me. I don't even know why, because nothing about those books really reminds me of Christmas, but the feeling that they give me is something that I associate with this time of year. 

3. Friends and family: Name a book with fantastic characters.

Perhaps it is because I *just* finished it, but I'm going to say Winter by Marissa Meyer. The Lunar Chronicles in general are chock full of amazing characters that I would love to be friends with, but they all developed so much in the last novel, and I'm so proud of them. 

beckisbookshelf.tumblr.com

4. Decorations: Name a book with a gorgeous cover you would proudly display on your shelves.

The Starbound trilogy. I think that these three novels have some of the most gorgeous covers that I've ever seen! 

5. Christmas cards: Name a book that carries a great message.

 All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, because I think it sheds light on a place that a lot of books tend to shy away from. Its brutal and real and sensitive in its depictions of mental illness, which I really appreciate. 

 

6. Ice and snow: Name a book that you were hoping to love but which ultimately left you feeling cold.

Fans of the Impossible Life by Kate Scelsa. I thought that this was going to be a really nice contemporary read, maybe with a deeper message to it, but the whole thing just gave me weird vibes, and I ended up barely finishing. 

7. Christmas lunch: Name a book that was big and intimidating but oh so worth it in the end.

A Game of Thrones because obviously all of the ASOIAF books are horrendously intimidating, but I ended up really enjoying the first book when I read it two years ago :) 

 

8. Mince pies: Name a book you found sweet and satisfying.

Most recently? First & Then by Emma Mills! I loved the Pride and Prejudice meets high school football aspect of it, and I found the characters to be really engaging, so I was caught up in their stories so much. 

9. Presents: What book do you wish you could give everyone to read?

Obviously my favorite series ever (besides Harry Potter) Throne of Glass! 

Merry Christmas Everyone!! 

xx
Sunny