K's Book Review

The first thing you do when you are buying a book (or at least you should do) is read the description of the book. By doing this you are giving yourself a 'feeling' of what the book will feel like to read in your hands. Anyone who reads a lot, or even a little, will tell you that every book has a different feel to it. From the way the story is spun to the voice of the author there is a feelings in the atmosphere of the story that you can't help but feel. Often times reading the back of the book will give you a completely different feeling than what you get from actually reading the book itself. Even when you think about a book you have read it is the feeling of the story that you are remembering as well as the characters and theme. That is why most people like a specific genre of books because they are used to and comfortable reading those types of stories. The best part of your favourite book is the feeling you get when you think about it. Are you sick of me using the...

I know a lot of people think that one side of the spectrum is better. You may love teen books for a variety of reasons. Likewise, you may love adult books because they are different than teen books. Or, you may not like either or like both. Let's discuss the main differences between them. Teen Books: Teen books are something that many of us start reading before we are even teenagers. Some of us continue reading them even once we have clearly outgrown those years or our lives. But if you sit down and read a 'classic' teen book and then immediately read a 'classic' adult book (for this purpose we are using adult fiction for all examples) you would notice that there is a great distinction in the tone, content, pace, and feel to the book. Teen books tend to have a quicker pace. No matter how slow the pace moves there is always a heart racing action that is packed into every page while the author tries to pull you along. The characters are obviously younger, less div...

1. Harry Potter: I don't even need to say anything about this one... but I will. A great series that ignited the love of reading in millions all across the world. From the youngest of children to the oldest of adults this book is read and enjoyed. It is a long series with great movies that very few have been unable to get through. If you are looking for a nice long series that you can read over a choosable period of time this is the series for you. 2. The Lord of the Rings: An older classic this is. This includes the Hobbit, which most read after the original three books. This series also comes with a movie that is almost more interesting than the books depending on who you ask. With the Hobbit now becoming a movie trilogy there is all the more reason to do a marathon of reading the books and watching the movies. Just a bit of a warning though, the original series is long and more drawn out than the movie with less 'action' scenes. If you plan on reading the trilogy in a...

1. Jurassic Park: While the movie was really nothing like the book both were spectacular in their delivery. In the book there are more characters, deeper story lines, and the answers to many of the questions asked while watching the movie. This also applies to the second Jurassic Park book which also became a movie. Both are great books completely worth a read if you liked either of the movies. 2. The Life of Pi: The movie in this case managed to keep very closely to the book, only leaving out the little details that were not completely necessary. It great to watch on the big screen because I got to see all of the beautiful scenes the author had painted while writing the book. If you haven't seen the movie yet, or even if you have, this is a book worth reading. 3. The Hobbit: A lot of critiques who have read the books then saw the movie has hated the movies because they took a small book and then turned it into a three part movie. I for one like to see the movie and the book a...

Hello everyone. This week I decided to get this stupid little app called Pinterest. Don't mock me, I spend more time messing around with books than I do with websites but it was recommended to me so I thought I would give it a go. One thing I found, which horrified me, was that people have many pages on what to do with 'old books'. At first this intrigued me because I thought there might be possibility. But then I saw what people we doing! They were cutting up books that were perfectly usable to make flowers out of just because they didn't want to read them anymore! Holy crap people, do not do this. There is no acceptable time to rip up, burn, tear, or craft a book no matter what state it is in. When a book is so worn out that it becomes almost unreadable it is the owners job to fix it up or to give it to someone else who is up to the job. Books are an important resource in todays time that we can't afford to lose. I know that sounds stupid but it is true. The o...

Hey everyone so as you may have guessed I am not a huge fan of horror movies. So it might come to your surprise that this week I decided to read Stephen King’s The Mist. But to be honest I don’t know if I would call this horror. Maybe Thriller suits it better. I never watched the movie, because I really don’t like seeing those things, but I did read the synopsis of the movie online so I knew what was going to happen. I find that there has to be a very good writer behind the story of a horror or thriller genre to get the emotions flowing. That is why I sometimes like to take a break from teen and adult fiction to take a look at some horror writing. And what better author to look at than Stephen King when looking for horror? David, his wife, and their young son are living a peaceful life on the side of a large lake when a large storm blows in. This isn’t unusual for them as they have been getting storms like this for the last couple days. But this storm proves to be different...

Hey everyone! Last week my mom and I went into a local bookstore in the area and saw this book: The Book Lover's Journal. Of course, at the time, I had no idea what it was. When I took it out of its wrapper to get a better look at it I realized it was just what a reader like myself needed.  There are several different sections, the first of which is depicted in the image above, dealing with books that you have read. There is a section for who you have leant or borrowed books from, what authors you liked, what books you have read and how you rated them. I have started using it for the blog to help get my information together better before writing a review. I am not sure if it is available at other bookstores (I haven't got a chance to look yet) but I am sure amazon.com would have some available if nowhere else. As you can see in the picture of the cover there is also a bookmark to mark your place. There is also a section on the other page of the one shown for notes on what...

Good Wednesday everyone! As usual I am doing an update for you and giving all of you readers out there a little advice. For those of you who haven't heard of it yet there is a brilliant website called Goodreads.com you can go to if you are a reader. It is free to sign up and there are endless amount of things you can do with it. Here you can rate books that you have read, add them to you read lists, research other books and read reviews written on books you have yet to read but are thinking you may want to. This is a great way to have books suggested to you and to find your next favourite read. But there are many other things you can do on this website rather than just add books you have already read and read reviews. One great section on it is the giveaways. If you have an account and can't find this setting here is what you do. 1. Log in to you account and go to the HOME PAGE 2. From here you should see a task bar on the page out beside the search function 3. Click on ...

Hello everyone! Today is the last day of 2014 in case you haven't noticed. Over the year I have read many books and done many reviews. I hope you all are continuing your reading now while you have a small break from work or school. And if you don't have a break, than you should take some time to yourself to do some reading! With the new year just hours away I thought that I would share with you a reading challenge for 2015 that I myself plan on completing. Now I know this is a little small so feel free to enlarge it and print it off if you think you would like to give it a try. Also keep in mind that I got this from the internet, I did not create this challenge, and that I am simply passing on the message to you all. I personally am very excited to start this and have bought most of the books to get started already. Keep in mind this doesn't start until tomorrow morning so no cheating and starting early. Thankfully with Christmas over I now have plenty of gift cards ...

Hey everyone, so we are almost at the end of our summer, and sad as it is for me to say, it is time to take some time off reading. It isn't that I want to stop all together, but I am about to head off for my first year in University, and I know that keeping up with my readings and studying is going to be a very hard task along with the hardships of leaving home and living on my own for a while.  I have written up tons of reviews in advance to buy myself some more time, but I don't know when the next time I will be able to write will be.  Reading is still the most important thing to me, and I still love to write, but like I said, my future is important to me and I want to be able to get good grades in school so that I can afford to do all the things I love such as this blog and my books. For a time I had considered a degree in journalism, but I have instead decided to pursue my dreams of becoming a lawyer instead, because I can write all I want, but becoming a lawyer i...

Hello everyone! For a while now I have been giving ratings on my books that I read, and I thought it might be good to do a post on what that rating means, and how I decide to rate it. I read a lot of books, and it took me a while to figure out what it was I wanted out of a book. Rating is not easy, not as easy as it seems, so here is the rating scale. 1 STARS : The book sucks, I couldn't even finish it, and I didn't make it halfway through the book. Very rarely will I rate a book this low, but there have been a few cases in which this has happened. I would never say not to read a book, even if it is this bad, I would only say that I don't like it, and give what those reasons are.  2 STARS : The book was bad, but I finished it. It hurt to finish it because I was so friggin' bored by it. A lot of these cases come from books that I have high expectations for and that let me down greatly when I read them. Sometimes it is just books that I don't want to read, but I ...

Hey everyone, sorry I didn't post yesterday. I was out of town and didn't get a chance to finish writing up this review. But now I am done, and I am able to post, and hopefully next week I will be able to keep on time with the posts. This week I read Immortal, which has been out for a while now, and the series I believe is already finished. It was a pretty good read, not the greatest in my long line of books I have read, but pretty good non-the-less. Evie is a normal girl who loves the ocean. She has lived their her entire life, and loves spending every day down in the clear water. But that life she loved has been taken away from her, and she has been shipped off to a private school, where the only water she gets to see is a mirky lake that she isn't allowed to go near. Feeling isolated and having trouble making friends, Evie wishes nothing more than to just go home. That is, until she meets Sebastian. He is everything she misses about the ocean, and for some time sh...

Hey everyone, this week I have read an older book The Hallow, which was an interesting read. The only thing I will say for sure about this book is that after reading it you will most likely hate the ending unless you continue reading on in the trilogy. It had almost everything there was to love about a good romance/mystery novel, coupled with the paranormal part to it as well. Meet Abbey, who's best friend has just gone missing. People are beginning to give up hope for finding her, but Abbey is never going to give up hope that she will find her safely.  Abbey is not like most teenage girls. She loves making perfume, and dreams of opening her own perfume shop downtown Sleepy Hollow, where she lives. And with her dad's help, her dream is getting closer and closer to becoming reality. While continuing her search in the last place her friend was seen, the bridge in the cemetery, Abbey meets some new friends. An elderly couple living near the bridge who tend to the graves an...

Hey everyone, back again this week, and I was lucky enough to get my hand on this book from a close friend at the library. It is not normally the type of book I would read, but it is still a teen book, so I thought I would give it a go. Meet Batman, no not the real Batman, but a boy who suffers from OCD. He is only 14 years old, and will soon be turning 15, and he is madly in love with a girl from his support group. Her name is Robyn, but her superhero name is Robin, so that she matches with him. She is older than him by about 2 years, but that doesn't stop him from trying. Along with the other 'hero's' from his support group he is trying to get better little by little. Having Robin around makes him feel better, as does the support from his younger brother. Even his divorced parents aren't getting in his way. But his mother has problems of her own, and they are slowly starting to affect Batman. First, she is a hoarder, and she doesn't want anyone outside ...

Hello everyone! Today I thought I would write my review on Embrace, the first book in the "Violet Eden Chronicles" series. I love this series and even though this isn't the most interesting book in the whole series, it is pretty freaking good! The books are released quickly and the author is great at portraying her feelings through her characters, which I love. I have been a big fan of Ms. Shirvington for a while now. Meet Violet, who is about to turn 17. It isn't as happy a moment as she was hoping for, considering it marked the anniversary of her mothers death. And as it approaches, she begins having dreams where she is attacked, and her scars are very real when she wakes up. Not to mention the tattoo making its way up her arm. Her friend Lincon is trying to help her, but there is very little he can tell her, and he is withdrawing from her as a friend as time goes on. Still confused, Violet turns to a man named Phoenix she met at the club, who even though is d...

Hey everyone! This week I went back to one of the first Teen Books I read. It has been so long since I had originally read this series that I had nearly forgotten everything that happened! It really is a great book series, and I hear word they are thinking of making it into a movie. Exciting right?! So before I get into why I did or did not like this book and my rating, let me give you a little back ground on the book itself. In the far off land of the future (one would assume) things are very different. When you are born, you are considered an 'ugly'. You are still an ugly until the day you turn 18, where the government takes you across the river to make you into a 'pretty', which involves a complicated procedure where they strip your skin, grind down your bones, and make you a completely new person who is perfect inside and out. From that day forward you are 'pretty' and can live your life in 'new pretty town' partying every day for years without ...

Hey everyone, lately I have been giving you advice on what books are good to read, and what you should check out based on your preferences. But for people who read a lot, and who don't stretch far from the same kind of books, you might find yourself in a bit of a rut. Today instead of a review for a book, I am going to give you some advice for finding your own kind of books. The first thing you can do is try blindly choosing a book. While this might not work out for you it is a great way to try something new. Let's say you read four books a month, and maybe it is time to try something new. Go to a bookstore, go to the section you normally buy your books in, and close your eyes. Then, reach out and pick a book. If it a book you already have, put it back and try again. If it is the second + book in the series find and choose the first one.  Another thing you could do is follow the first person you see in the store (note: please don't make this obvious, and if they notice y...

Hey everyone, another series for you today. This was one of the first series I read when I was getting into reading, and it is by my favourite author L. J. Smith, so it had everything I needed in a book. There are three large books like this, and each book has three different stories in them. Each story has new characters, but often characters will run into other stories, which is nice because it shows where they go after their own stories are over. The 'Night World' is a world hidden within our society. It is made up of a few groups of paranormal creatures; Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, and Shifters. Each of these have their own classes, and they have the choice of joining two circles, one of 'generally good' and one of 'generally bad', but either way the rules stand that humans never learn of their existence, and they remain a secret.  But there is another circle, Circle Daybreak, that believes in letting humans know about the existence of the Nigh...

Hey everyone, so this week I will be doing a review on another series, instead of a single book. You might be seeing a lot of these in the next little while depending on how things go, because some people don't want to get into a series and realize they don't want to keep reading, and therefore the book is kind of ruined. This doesn't happen to everybody, but anyone who reads as much as I do would run into it once or twice. So this week I thought I would do the run off of a classic 'Clockwork Angel', the prequel to the Mortal Instruments novels that have recently become a popular movie series as well. Now, I don't personally think you need to read the first novels to understand what is happening in this one, but it certainly makes it easier to understand, and there are a lot more 'AHA!' moments if you do. Meet Tessa, who is moving to England to find her brother who disappeared recently and has sent her a letter instructing her to come to meet him. ...

Hey guys, today I want to take the time to appreciate all the 'in-between' books. Now, you might ask yourself, what is an 'in-between' book? Well, an in-between book is any novella or short story that happens on the side of a good story. So that is mostly 0.5 books (prequels) or 1.5 books (Stories happening between the first and second books). These stories don't always have to be read to understand the book, but they are always a good read and might answer some small questions that you have been asking yourself that the original story only lightly touched on. A lot of the time you will see these books from the point of view of someone besides the original narrater,  and these people always give you more of a look on the story than what you normally see. By doing this the author is giving you either a sneak peak at what is to come, or they are trying to answer questions that they know their readers have been asking, but it is too inconvenient for them to answ...