Trick or Treat Round the Block | Spooky Scary | Halloween Book Tags

And here are two more book tags to celebrate the coming of Halloween. I’m so excited for the holiday though I’m doing nothing special for it and will most likely be working the night away. I just love the vibe of the holiday: the costumes, the candy, the spookiness, the scary movies. When I get a chance, I’ll do a little research into Halloween. I don’t know much about it, but I have heard some stories that make me think it has a dark beginning.

Anyway, I found both of these tags on the Sassy Book Geek.

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Trick or Treat Round The Block Book Tag

created by booktuber, the Bookish Porcupine

Creepy house on the corner of the street: Book with a creepy cover

Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics

I have no idea what this book is about, but I think it’s YA horror. The cover creeps me out and makes me think it’s about possession. I got it in a YA quarterly book box couple years ago but I gave it away without reading it. It’s not my sort of thing.

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Stranger Things Book Tags

We have a few more days to go before Halloween arrives and to celebrate, I decided to do these two Stranger Things book tags I found. Stranger Things is a paranormal TV show on Netflix about a group kids trying to protect their new friend while trying to find out the cause of the weird occurrences in their town. It’s such an intriguing story, and the kids’ friendship and the setting makes me nostalgic for ’90s movies like The Sandlot and Little Rascals.

If you’d like to watch a show that fits the Halloween theme but isn’t scary, I recommend Stranger Things. The atmosphere of the show makes it perfect for Halloween: dark tones, foggy, creepy vibes, escaped patients from covert government facilities…. It also makes me think of X-Files. It’s a good story and will immediately grab your attention.

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Stranger Things Book Tag

I found this on Life of a Female Bibliophile. It was created by booktuber Sarah Sunbeemz.

Epic Intro: The opening sequence of Stranger Things is amazing and really grabs your attention. Name a book that grabbed your attention from the first page.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

BuzzFeed Unsolved Book Tag

It’s book tag week here on Zezee with Books in honor of Halloween. Today I’m featuring the BuzzFeed Unsolved Book Tag, which I found on Wonderless Reviews.

This tag was the first I’d heard of BuzzFeed Unsolved, which is a TV show on YouTube that explores things such as the paranormal occurrences and unsolved crime. The tag was created by booktuber Sarah from the YA Room who’s a fan of the show.

Shaniac: A book you don’t think is deserving of its hype

The Stand by Stephen King

Maybe it’s too early for me to say this since I’m only about 300 pages in and the book has over a thousand pages, BUT I’ve yet to see what’s so great about this book and at 300 pages in I expected to be blown away in some way already. Instead I’m trying to be patient as I wade through all the ramblings and tangents. It’s annoying because it seems with each new character POV, and there are many character POVs, the story feels like it’s starting all over again. I don’t feel as if I’m in the groove of the story; I feel as if I’m stuck at the beginning. It’s frustrating.

Fall Tag

It’s gonna be all book tags from now until HALLOWEEN 😀 😀 !!!

It’s now one of my favorite times of the year: Fall. I can dig out my boots from the back of my closet and pull them on and shop for interesting blazers to pair with them (haven’t found any yet though 😦 ). The leaves are turning, the temperature is dropping, and today there’s a fine, misty rain permeating my area making it seem a bit foggy outside. I love it all.

I love it because I’m inside and so am not outside freezing my ass off and getting wet. I love it because this is perfect weather for reading while cozily snuggled in a corner or on my bed or next to a window sipping hot chocolate or tea. I love it because this is great atmosphere for watching a scary movie. It will contribute to the fright and I know I’ll be thoroughly scared by it all. This weekend will be great.

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I was tagged for the Fall Tag by Emily at Embuhlee liest, my Hobb-a-long buddy-reader — we’re buddy-reading Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings books. The tag was created by The Life of Kristyn.

Which two things tell you that the Fall season has begun?

Leaves turning: For me, Fall doesn’t begin until the leaves begin to turn and fall of the trees. That’s what signals the season for me.

Awful cold, rainy weather: I do not like cold and rain when I’m out in it, but it signals a change in the season for me too.

I Heart Characters! #12: Halloween Ghost

I Heart Characters! is a weekly meme hosted by Dani at Perspective of a Writer to share our love of great characters. Each week, Dani will assign a topic/type of character that we must find examples of in the various media we consume (books, TV shows, movies, comics, podcasts, etc.).

October 18 topic:

Plagued by Ghosts 

A character who IS a ghost or can see and/or interact with the spiritual realm.

erm…can’t say; it’s a spoiler

“Home and Away” by Candice Montgomery

This is not the sort of book I usually go for. YA contemporary is not my jam. Usually, if I decide to read a contemporary novel, it would be an adult novel. But I’m glad that Page Street Publishing reached out and sent an advanced copy of Home and Away for me to review. (Thanks y’all!) I was surprised I enjoyed it.

Genre:

YA contemporary

Pubbed:

October 16, 2018

Goodreads summary:

Tasia Quirk is young, Black, and fabulous. She’s a senior, she’s got great friends, and a supportive and wealthy family. She even plays football as the only girl on her private high school’s team.

But when she catches her mamma trying to stuff a mysterious box in the closet, her identity is suddenly called into question. Now Tasia’s determined to unravel the lies that have overtaken her life. Along the way, she discovers what family and forgiveness really mean, and that her answers don’t come without a fee. An artsy bisexual boy from the Valley could help her find them—but only if she stops fighting who she is, beyond the color of her skin. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:

As I said, I didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did partly because of its genre and partly because of what the story is about. I immediately assumed it would focus a lot on football, which sort of turned me off, but I’m glad the mention of the mysterious box caught and held me and made me give the story a chance.

“Dragon Keeper” by Robin Hobb

Me and Emily from Embuhlee liest are back at it again. WE’RE READING ANOTHER ROBIN HOBB BOOK!!!! 😀 😀 And so far it’s great, of course!

Genre:

Fantasy

Series:

Rain Wild Chronicles, book 1

Realm of the Elderlings, book 10

Pubbed:

2009

Quick summary:

The dragon eggs have hatched! Finally the skies will be filled with dragons again…or so the characters hope. Despite the efforts of the dragon Tintaglia and the people of the Rain Wilds and Bingtown, the serpents that cocooned themselves in the Rain Wilds were too weak, too small, and too late to hatch as full grown dragons. Instead, they are deformed, weak, and unable to hunt to feed themselves. Tintaglia abandons them and leaves the responsibility to the people of the Rain Wilds to care for the deformed dragons (so it seems), but the dragons are a nuisance to their human neighbors, so the Rain Wild Council devise a way to get rid of them that would also purge the Rain Wilds of folks considered undesirable.

Comics Roundup #27: Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet, bks. 1-4

I tried Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series for the first time back in 2015. I was introduced to him through the Harry Potter books because he’s the illustrator of my favorite editions — the 15^th anniversary editions. I love the illustrations, the scenes Kibuishi chose to highlight, and his use of color to tap into the emotion and tone of a scene or to highlight certain things. This made me want to sample more of his work, so I tried The Stonekeeper, the first book in his popular middle-grade fantasy graphic novel series.

I wasn’t blown away by The Stonekeeper, but I was interested enough to want to return to the story and, finally, I have. Recently, I reread the first book and read books two, three, and four — The Stonekeeper’s Curse, The Cloud Searchers, and The Last Council, respectively. With each installment, my interest in the story grew until I read book four and was left wanting more since I don’t have the fifth book.

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Amulet, bks. 1-4 by Kazu Kibuishi (illus.)

Genre:

Middle-grade fantasy

Pubbed:

2008-2011

Series:

Amulet

The Stonekeeper (book 1)

The Stonekeeper’s Curse (book 2)

The Cloud Searchers (book 3)

The Last Council (book 4)

Quick summary:

Emily and her brother Navin move to their old family home with their mom after their father died in a car crash. While fixing up the house, which is in dire need of repair, Emily and Navin find a peculiar necklace that Emily takes a liking to. One night while sleeping, the family is woken by a noise that the kids’ mom investigates. She’s kidnapped and taken to a different world where Emily and Navin encounter queer creatures such as monsters, robots, and talking animals. There, the kids learn more about their family, Emily learns about the necklace she inherited, and they make new friends who help them to rescue their mother.

“Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen

It was morning. As always, I was rushing to catch my bus to work but stole some time to look up an audio book to listen to on my way there and while working. Work is boring. Traveling to work on public bus can be aggravating. I needed a distraction.

I pulled up my Overdrive app and scrolled through audio books. I couldn’t find any available for books I’ve already read, which is the best way for me to consume audio books because it’s hard for me to remember or focus on new-to-me reads on audio. Then I said fuck it. Let me just download a random one. I pulled up a list of popular audio books and downloaded the one that snagged my attention first — the black and white cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. I didn’t even know who the dude is, but I knew that a lot of people raved over the book. It could be good, I thought as I popped in my headphones and hopped out the door.

Genre:

Nonfiction — autobiography, music

Top 5 Wednesday #28: Monster Madness!!

Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme created by GingerReadsLainey and now managed by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. For more information on this meme, visit the Goodreads group.

This week’s topic:

Favorite Monsters

Yea, so this one was difficult because I haven’t encountered any monsters in books or movies that I’d consider a favorite, so instead I’ll show a couple books I love that focus on monsters.

Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu, illus. by Sana Takeda