Bookseer

Does everyone know about www.bookseer.com?

It is an ingenius website that gives book recommendations from Amazon (and LibraryThing in the future) based on a book title and author.  Give it a go now!

I tried it on "The Maze Runner" by James Dashner and it recommended the following:

•The Scorch Trials (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 2) by James Dashner

•I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies) by Pittacus Lore

•The Journal of Curious Letters (The 13th Reality) by James Dashner

•Incarceron (Incarceron, Book 1) by Catherine Fisher

•Matched by Ally Condie

•Lockdown: Escape from Furnace 1 by Alexander Gordon Smith

•Sapphique by Catherine Fisher

•Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

•Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins

•The Compound by S. A. Bodeen
 
Now some of these I have watched, but the others I had never heard of.  I have already added them to my Goodreads TBR list.

The Giver - Lois Lowry

I just finished this book. For my review and Nadine's previous review click this link.

http://literbugs.blogspot.com/2009/12/giver-lois-lowry.html

The Maze Runner - James Dashner

This is a book that has been sitting on my nightstand for a while now. I thought the idea of the story was good, but it just never made it to the top of my pile. That is until Nadine read it and told me that it was amazing and that I had to. So as soon as I finished the book I was reading I pulled this one out and went at it. My first book of 2011 for my +11 in 2011 reading challenge, The Maze Runner by James Dashner.

Boy am I happy I did. What a great book. You begin just as much in the dark as the main character Thomas, as he wakes up in a dark cold elevator. Then being introduced to a strange and heavily structured society of teenage boys surrounded by an ominous maze through which Runners search everyday for an exit. The catch is that the walls move every night. Along with Thomas, you learn that one boy arrives a month, every month, as it has always been. Until one day the elevator brings forth the unthinkable.....a girl.

Jaki's review from Goodreads

Wow, this book was pretty friggin good. I was thinking the whole way through, trying to work out the maze too. The I read the last paragraph and .... pow. I need to get the second book, and quick!

Out now in hardcover, The Scorch Trials.

 

The Keeper

Well I have finished the first of the 61 books I plan on reading this year and it was truly terrifying. Recommended by a friend, The Keeper was promised to give me nightmares, and although I didn't have any of those (because I didn't read it before bed time), it was very scary.

The Keeper by Sarah Langan tells the story of the Marley sisters; Liz and Susan. Susan grows up to be that girl in town that everyone talks about, but no-one can look directly in the eye. She doesn't talk to anyone, has sex with many of the males in the small town of Bedford and everyone in the town has nightmares about her.

When a tragedy hits Bedford, the nightmares about Susan begin to come true.

If you enjoy a great horror and a bit of gore then this one is for you.

DO NOT READ THIS ONE IN THE DARK.

+11 for 2011

Well 2010 was a good year for me. I managed to complete my challenge for the year which was to read 50 books. Finishing the 50th book at lunch time on the 31st of December was pushing it though.

The fantastic blog and podcast Books on the Nightstand have issued a challenge to read +11 for 2011 which means I will be attempting to read 61 books this year.  To make it a bit more interesting I have decided to split the books I read into six groups of 10 with one left over just in case there is a book I read that doesn't fit into the categories.  These six groups are:

• 10 books borrowed (whether that is from friends or the library)
• 10 books from the shelf (books that have been sitting on my bookshelf but have not been read)
• 10 books made into movies
• 10 books purchased in 2011 (really a reason to buy more books - sorry Martin)
• 10 classics (so far my list for this category includes Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights)
• 10 reviewed books (I want to increase the amount of books I review for work)

At the moment I am reading "The Keeper" by Sarah Langan which I borrowed from a friend who warned me that it gave her nightmares.  That warning was warranted because I can't take it to bed with me because I'm a bit wuss!  Great story though.  A review will be coming once I have completed it.

Where have we been? Part 2

All I can say is Gooooooooooaaaaaaaal! Yes that's right. I am one of those soccer nuts that got right into the World Cup. I pretty much turned into a vampire for the 6 weeks of football festivities, as I watched very near to all of the games as they aired on my friend SBS. Now that the beautiful game spectacular has left us for another 4 years, I am back into my reading and will write reviews and my thoughts and interpretations on the books I'm reading very soon .

Where have we been?

I can't speak for Jaki or Jodi, but I've been busy studying in the past few months...so...now that this semester is over, I am going to be dedicating time to reading and posting reviews here on what I read.  Stay tuned.