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

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

books to read around christmas!

It's that time of year, folks!!! (okay, disclaimer: I celebrate Christmas. If you do not, I am terribly sorry, I hope this doesn't offend you!) THE BEST MONTH EVER. DECEMBER MEANS EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING IS 100% DECKED OUT FOR CHRISTMAS. I am am unashamed lover of everything festive, so what better way to get into more holiday spirit than to discuss my favorite books to read around the holidays!

I did a post recently where I discussed books that have Christmassy scenes in them, which I will direct you to here. However, this is different: these are books that just *feel* like Christmas to me: whether it is because I always have read them over the holidays, the fact that they have a dark, muffled, winter feel, or because they give me warm fuzzies that remind me of the goodwill towards men thing that comes around Christmas. These are all perfect books to curl up with while sipping a warm beverage and enjoying a break before the new year :)

1. The Harry Potter Series

2. The Song of Achilles 

3. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe 

4. These Broken Stars 

5. A Little Something Different

6. Fangirl 

7. And We Stay

8. The Goose Girl 

9. The Book Thief 

10. The Book of Blood and Shadow

11. The Princess Bride

12. Saving Francesca 

13. Daughter of Smoke and Bone

14. Stardust

15. Instructions For A Broken Heart

16. My True Love Gave To Me 

17. Eragon

18. A Thousand Pieces of You

19. Vicious

20. Pride and Prejudice

What books get you in the holiday spirit? 

xx

sunny

a week of recommendations: day one

Hi guys! So this week is going to be a little different here at Stardust and Words. (though there will still be regularly scheduled posts along with the special ones!) My friend Violet is doing a really fun theme week over on her blog, Paper Worlds and Swirls of Ink. She's invited me to participate for the week, and the link to her original post is here. Basically, it is a week of recommendations, where every day has a different theme, and we recommend books to you in that genre each day. The genres are as follows: 

Monday: Historical Fiction Tuesday: Fantasy/SciFi Wednesday: Contemporary Thursday: Paranormal Friday: Retellings

As you can see, today's theme is historical fiction, which, sadly, is something that I have never read a ton of. However, I do have a few recommendations from my meager experience with historical fiction. 

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – takes place in World War II Germany and one of my all time favorites, this revolves around an orphaned girl, her adoptive parents, and a jewish boy hiding in their basement. It's beautiful, brilliant, hearwrenching. 

 

2. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller– Ok I didn't know whether I could count this as historical fiction, because the events of the Trojan War aren't concrete historical events, but then I decided that I wanted to count it. I love reading about ancient Greece and especially the Trojan War, in school and in fiction, and this is such an amazing and interesting take on those events. 

 

3. The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson– This book takes place in Germany in the 1380s. It has the elements of a fairytale retelling, loosely based on Sleeping Beauty, but it is also much more grounded and decidedly less magical than many other fairy tale retellings that I've read. 

 

4. Secret Letters by Leah Scheier – This novel is set in Victorian London and involves Sherlock Holmes and mystery and cute boys. It's been almost two years since I've read this, but I do remember it being a fun one. 

 
5. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry– Another one set in World War II, this time in Denmark, I think this is one that most every elementary school-aged kid read at one point in their formative years. I remember loving it when I was a kid, and on a recent re-read I was surprised by how much I still enjoyed it. 

So there is the first of five recommendation posts coming at you this week! What are some of your favorite historical fiction reads? 

xx

Sunny 

top ten tuesday: the last 3 years

Happy Tuesday everyone! Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted over at The Broke and The Bookish, and this week's theme is "March 3: Top Ten Books You Would Classify As ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS from the past 3 years (you can extend it to 5 if you need to)." Needless to say, I love this theme, as talking about my favorite books is a favorite pastime. So, I went through my goodreads "favorites" shelf and tried to narrow it down to ten. Because the last three years were the first years I really joined into the online reading community, I've read so many amazing stories, but here are the top eleven (sorry) that have impacted me the most over the last three years.

top ten tuesday: if i had a book club

Top ten Tuesday is hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish, and is a weekly feature where every week there is a different theme, and you must come up with a list of ten things under that theme. This week, the theme is "January 27: Ten Books I'd Love to Read With My Book Club/If I Had A Book Club (or you could pick a specific kind of book club -- like if you had a YA book club or an adult book club or a science fiction book club etc.)" List is under the cut!