Jess does her ABC’s for 2010!

Hi guys I’m taking up the ABC challenge for 2010 for the first time. Wish me luck and happy reading to you all!

A -
B -
C -
D - Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (post 17)
E -
F - If I Stay by Gayle Forman (post 27)
G -
H -
I -
J -
K - Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert (post 23)
L -
M - Book Lover by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack (post 7)
N-
O- Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (post 28)
P - Alanna, The first adventure by Tamora Pierce (post 10)
Q-
R - A Book Addict's Treasury by Lynda Murphy and Julie Rugg (post 17)
S- Night World: Bind-up volume 1 by L J Smith (post 21)
T-
U -
V-
W - Impossible by Nancy Werlin (post 26)
X-
Y-
Z- The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (post 7)

Hi Jess - Welcome to the challenge!

Good Luck Jess!

Hi & good luck.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys! :)

I founds you! Not hard since you're near the top of the group but hey :P
One star plonked firmly on this thread :D

Ok got my first two books read heres the reviews.

The Z Read
The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Shadow of the Wind is an exciting and suspenseful gothic thriller, set immediately after the Spanish Civil War. One early morning a young boy is taken by his farther to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books a hidden library in Barcelona full of rare and obscure titles. Daniels father asks him to choose one book and to treasure it for the rest of his life. This is how Daniel happens upon The Shadow of the Wind. After reading it Daniel becomes obsessed with the book and its author Julian Carax, as he investigates he is drawn into the mystery of Julian Carax, his books, his death and his life. Before long Daniel is tangled up in the web that Carax has left behind a web spun out of murder, love, betrayal and revenge. I adored this book. It’s one of those rare books that I would recommend to anyone as I truly believe that it has something for everyone. This is one of my all time very favourite reads that I know I’ll re-read over and over in the years to come. I rushed out and brought Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s second book The Angel's Game as soon as I finished it and if it’s half as good as The Shadow of the Wind then I’m in for an outstanding read.

The M Read
Book Lover by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack

Dora is separated from her husband and has lost her direction in life. To deal with the blow she compulsively buys books then locks herself away for days at a time reading and getting lost in another world. This is how she meets Fred who works at her local bookstore. This book is strictly chick lit so I think we can all see where the plot is going. This was a nice light read that I would recommend to all book addicts. I think a lot of us will be able to relate to Dora’s book binges and her passion for reading. Over all worth a read.

Shadow of the Wind sounds interesting. My library has a copy, so I'm adding it to the wishlist.

Oh good I hope you enjoy it. It really is a gorgeous read I can’t begin to recommend it enough. Everyone I know who’s read it has loved it so hopefully you will too.

The P Read
Alanna, The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness) by Tamora Pierce

This was my first read of this book and my first by Tamora Pierce. Unlike a lot of reviews around my age (19) I didn’t first read this book in my younger teen years, and I only wish that I had because I think it would have become one of my very favourite childhood books and I would have re read it over and over the years. I couldn’t give this book 5 stars as for me now the writing was just a little bit too young to fully enjoy that’s why I only wish I’d read it when I was younger because I think I would have loved it even more. However this book was still immensely enjoyable and I feel like I’ll enjoy the books more and more as Alanna gets older as with her being between the ages of 10 and 13 in this book I didn’t connect with her as much as someone younger may be able to. Over all this was a really promising start and I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the Song of the Lioness series to find out what happens to Alanna and co next.

I'm going to do my D read next and for it I've chosen Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

So glad you liked your first Pierce book :D
I could do with a Classic read so I may actually join you on the Rebecca front cos I've got it with me at uni for my BotS challenge

Yeah I’m doing it for my BotS challenge too :) Do it!!! then we can have a nice long discussion when were finished! I've just sat here and read the first two chapters to get a taste of what its like and I'm kinda hooked already!

Yea! Our own mini-book club lol.
I may read a bit now before i go eat cos I can't stay up too late tonight as I have my blood tests tomorrow and I need to be awake before 9am which shall be interesting. Cripes I hope I can manage it :S

Ah seriously Rach maybe you shouldn’t start it if you need an early night it really is good so far! I hope they go ok hun *hugs* and remember your getting up early to find out why you cant get up early lol so it'll all be worth it :)

*wails* aahh don't tell me that!! That'll make me want to read it even more!!
God I know it's so paradoxical that I have to get up early when I can't :S but gosh darn it I'm getting into bed at 9 and I shall stay there til I fall asleep!!

The D Read
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

This is a book that I’ve always wanted to read but have put off because of it being a classic. I have a bit of a phobia about reading classics, some of the stuffy covers and studying them at school has always put me off as I always thought they’d be too much of a challenge to read and there for I wouldn’t enjoy them. However I decided to bite the bullet with this one after friends telling me how good it is. I adored it and found it so simple to follow while the writing still remained gorgeously gothic and haunting. I’ve since purchased some more of Daphne Du Maurier’s works and some other classics and if there as enjoyable as Rebecca then I’m in for a real treat.

The R Read
A Book Addict's Treasury by Lynda Murphy and Julie Rugg

This is the perfect book for a book addict. It’s full of short stories and quotes about books and bookish behaviour that I could relate to. There’s so many ‘that’s me!’ moments and its perfect to pick up when you’ve got 5 minutes to just read a little bit more. I also loved the authors Lynda Murphy and Julie Rugg’s own bookish stories at the start of the book. A must for book lovers!

Hi, Jessica,

I found Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn wonderful. In relation to classics I have found myself pleasantly surprised. Dickens has always proved more rewarding than I expected.

Good luck with your reading.

Peter

Thanks for stopping by Peter. Jamaica Inn is one of the books I got the other day so I'll be reading that soon. Hopefully as time goes on and I read some more classics my feeling of being inferior towards them will lessen :)

Other classics I have found myself reading and enjoyed enormously include:

The Three Musketeers my Alexander Duma. (I was in Heathrow airport for a three hour wait and it was the only book in the small airport bookshop that I considered worth making any effort at) (By the way, it was fantastic.)

A Christmas Carol

I've just finished The Simpkins Plot by George A. Birmingham. It was published in 1911 and is a favourite of my wife's. It is an hilarious farce set in the west of Ireland. (Also it is available on www.gutenberg.org )

Enjoy your alphabet of reading.

Thanks pgmcc, I’ll make a note of them and check them out at some point.

Finished the S read! Here it goes!
The S Read
Night World: Bind-up volume 1 by L J Smith

I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for just over a year now and have only just finished reading it for the first time, and like most books that you put off reading for ages I asked myself why it took me so long to read such an awesome book! When I got to the end of the first story in this volume Secret Vampire I was really sad because I was enjoying the story so much and wasn’t sure I wanted to move on to the other two but each story in my opinion just got better and better. So the order of my favourite stories goes backward- Enchantress, Daughters of Darkness and then Secret Vampire although there all really good. I brought the other 2 volumes today (for a bargain of £3.99 each basically half price at Tesco) and I’m so excited to read them and all the rest of L.J Smiths books.

Hey, I found you! Good luck with your ABCs - I've still got a few left on mine but since I'm doing the 1010 as well I'll just be slotting them in if I happen to be reading one with the right letter... See, this is why I wanted to finish my ABC Challenge before the New Year!

Hey Ellie yeah seems as I’ve still got a whole year ahead of me at the minute im just adding them if I read something with the right letter!

Today I finished the K read and heres my thoughts…

The K Read
Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert

Kara hasn't been back to Oak Park since the end of junior year, when a heroin overdose nearly killed her and sirens heralded her exit. Four years later, she returns to face the music. Her life changed forever back in high school: her family disintegrated, she ran around with a whole new crowd of friends, she partied a little too hard, and she fell in love with gorgeous bad-boy Adrian, who left her to die that day in Scoville Park....

Amid the music, the booze, the drugs, and the drama, her friends filled a notebook with heartbreakingly honest confessions of the moments that defined and shattered their young lives. Now, finally, Kara is ready to write her own.

I honestly enjoyed every moment of this book. It deals with so many issues, depression, suicide, cutting, drugs, domestic violence and so many other things. I found myself tearing up when reading every characters Ballad ( a story of their life that changed them in some way) and even though a lot of characters did things that I didn’t agree with myself I still completely understood why they felt the need to do that and never once judged them for it. This book is so powerful and memorable that I had to give it the full 5 stars. I can’t find a single fault with it the story’s so strong and real and the characters feel like they could be regular kids you see on the street all with these terrible secrets and you just wish you could dive into the book and give them all a huge hug. I’ve since ordered Stephanie’s debut novel I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and I can’t wait to read it and any other books that Steph brings out in the future.

Ah, see, that's where I made my mistake - I started about three quarters of the way through last year and just couldn't read fast enough, not in order anyway. It was Madame Bovary that slowed me down, I know it! :-)

I might have to check out that book - on a happy day though methinks...

If you're looking for a "W", you could do worse than We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It is the book that influenced Orwell to write 1984. Also, it is short and could be used for your "Y" or your "Z" if you are stuck for those letters.

It was written by Zamyatin in the 1920s but did not appear in printed form in its original Russian until the 1980s having been widely published in English from the time it was written.

The W Read
Impossible by Nancy Werlin

For generations the Scarborough girls have each fallen pregnant at the age of 17 then after each given birth to a baby girl became mad straight after to the point that their beyond help. This is what happened to our main character Lucy Scarborough’s mother Miranda, so when Lucy herself falls pregnant after being raped at the age of 17 she finds it a little strange a really weird coincidence or not? Her mother keeps turning up at her foster parents house trying to tell Lucy that theres a curse on the family and that Lucy’s doomed to the same fate as the rest of the women in the family unless she completes 3 impossible tasks from a folk song based on the Scarborough girls curse that has haunted her all of her life. So is there a curse? Or is it just one of her mother’s crazy tales? And more importantly how is Lucy going to break a curse asking her to perform three impossible tasks to save herself and her unborn daughter?

I actually brought this book on a bit of a whim not really knowing that much about it or its author, Ok I admit I was drawn in by the cool cover! But all in all I’m glad I picked it up. It was an original story and a fairly quick read full of magic and romance. Over all I’d give it 4 stars.

The F Read
If I Stay by Gayle Forman

I’ve had this book waiting to be read on my shelf for a while now and I have no idea why I haven’t picked it up sooner. It’s a short read being only 200 and something pages long but it’s so beautiful. Mia has it all a loving boyfriend a wonderful family and a bright future. That is until one cold February morning when Mia and her family are in a car accident. Mia’s mother and farther die instantly and Mia is left in a coma. Whilst in this coma Mia’s able to observe what’s going on around her and realises that she gets to make the decision to stay or let go and die. Life as she knew it has changed and Mia has to decide with the help of the friends and family around her at the hospital whether life could be worth waking up to. This is such a gorgeous read one of my favourite passages is at the very start as Mia describes how her mom at the front passenger seat got hit in a way that cushioned the blow for her and her brother which summed her mother up to a T. I was in tears through most of this book but also smiling through them at the hope it displays also. Definitely a book I would recommend I give it 4.5 stars.

The O Read
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Every review that I’ve read for this book has been positive and mine will be no exception. I’m so glad that I’ve read this book and can now see what all the fuss is about. It’s perfect. I absolutely adored it. Definitely in my top favourite books of all time. I could gush about how much I loved it all day long. The writing is gorgeous. The story original and funny and easy but at the same time heartbreaking and complex and layered. I cant really say what this book is about without giving the whole plot away but if you enjoyed If I Stay by Gayle Forman or Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher I’d definitely recommend picking this book up. I can’t believe this is a debut novel and I will without hesitation pick up the next book Lauren Oliver brings out. Recommended to anyone and everyone, 5 stars.