Gurlaffe Reads

     What a life! Things have been crazy in my corner of the world, what with spending hours lurking around at theater performances shining spotlights and getting ready for fake ACT exams and real semester exams. Shockingly enough, it is actually freezing here again. We're back to sweatshirt weather, and sitting here typing about it at midnight is making my mood drop considerably.       This week I finally finished Winter  and am ridiculously close to being done with The Sunken City . I'll probably be done with that one by tomorrow. I started Prodigy  as well, and I did spend a good deal of time thinking about reading Fahrenheit 451 . I've realized recently that I'm not particularly skilled at judging my reading speed. It's good to have goals though, I suppose. *shrug*      Anyway, that brings us to the tbr for this upcoming week: The Sunken City  by Emma V. R. Noyes This is such a fast-paced read... I mean I just powered...

     The fourth installment of Marissa Meyer's  The Lunar Chronicles sent me from being an obligatory-it's-too-popular-to-ignore reader to a genuine fan of the series. It turned the series from a lighthearted, happily ever after to a real story of sacrifice, bravery, revolution, and love.      In Winter, we meet the newest and final member of Cinder's teenage revolutionary crew: Queen Levana's stepdaughter, Princess Winter. Winter first meets Cress when the Rampion crew arrives on Luna and she's left behind due to a confrontation. She hides out with Jacin, Winter's best friend and the Queen's guard. When Winter rejects Thaumaturge Aimery's creepy marriage request, Levana asks Jacin to kill her, but instead, he helps her escape the palace.       Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is provoking a rebellion in Lunar sectors RM-9. When the queen's soldiers arrive, Wolf and Cinder are taken as prisoners. Cress and Jacin escape the palace. C...

     Happy Saturday! I am in an extra good mood right now because it's supposed to be 77 outside later today. Perfect outside reading weather!       I'm still behind-as-ever on my reading plans, but hopefully that will start to be reconciled this weekend. My review for Winter should be out today. It definitely took much longer than expected for me to read that one. It looks unsuspecting, but it's actually 823 pages. Crazy. I also got a little farther into The Sunken City, and I have a really good feeling about it. Fahrenheit 451  was finally available for checkout on Thursday as well. I think I'm in good shape for powering through at least Winter  and The Sunken City  this weekend, and I can probably get a good start on Fahrenheit 451 as well.      As far as the blog side of things goes, I posted on Thursday about my must-buy authors. Things are getting chaotic now that it's show week for theater, so I probably won't be ab...

     Although I am a big fan of bookstores, I try not to buy books that I think I'll never reread. Usually I won't even buy books that I've never read before. However, like most readers, there are a couple authors whose names just pop out on a bookstore shelf, and I simply must buy their newest release. In this post, I'll be going over some of my must-buy authors. Sarah J. Maas      I'm definitely not the only person who will give my left pinky to get my hands on an SJM book. Although I'm not a huge fan of the more ~spicy~ scenes in her books, she's insanely talented, and her plots are so-well done that it's almost impossible to put her books down. John Green      I could talk for ages about how much I love John Green. His writing flows so easily that I can power through his books in just a few sittings. There's also the bonus of John Green paperbacks only being around ten bucks at the average bookstore. Rick Riordan      ...

     Hello everyone! I am painfully aware that it is Monday and weekly updates come out on Saturdays. However, I was home for Easter break, and it completely slipped my mind until the ride back to school. So here I am typing away on my phone, the essence of panic, trying to form a coherent thought about what I read in the past week. But if you've been sitting on your couch the past two days, tears running down your face, refreshing my blog every five minutes to see if my post came out, then take heart, because despite temporarily abandoning my blog, I made a sheep cake this weekend (as pictured above). Take it as a sort of peace offering. (This recipe is literally fire though, so here's a link in case you, too, want to make a sheep cake:  very tasty sheep cake .)      Before we get into my books read (or left unread) in the last week and my tbr, here's a quick update on spring: it's not here yet. Yesterday I was going to post a spring stack on Instagra...

     About 130 million books have been written ever  in the history of people writing books. Hence, certain aspects or occurrences have been used and reused to the point that they've even been given their own names, such as the enemies-to-lovers trope. In this honest and unabridged post, I'll be tackling my top five personal favorites. 1. The Forced Proximity Enemies-to-Lovers      I think it's safe to say that everyone has a soft spot for the classic enemies-to-lovers trope. However, my particular favorite is a subcategory of this trope with the addition of forced proximity. Think Katniss and Peeta or Annabeth and Percy. Biting insults turning into a ~relationship~ is just the kind of story arc that gets readers interested. 2. The On-Again-Off-Again Love Triangle      Love triangles are also wildly popular among readers, but I'm a fan of the particular type where it's not 100% clear who the main character is going to end up with. Think ...

     Hello hello! This week has been quite hectic, so I am ages behind on reading. I'm still plugging away at Dune ... Hopefully I'll be done with that one soon, because I'm really looking forward to moving on with my life (and my tbr). I also need to finish reading it so I can get to Anna Karenina  and Winter  before they're due at the library. Feeling rushed to read books because of library due dates is hands down the worst feeling.      But on a happier note, I went on a lovely trip to Barnes and Noble today. This store was like a bookish paradise. There were two floors!!! and an escalator. I ended up leaving with The Love Hypothesis  by Ali Hazelwood (bookstagram made me do it) and You'll Be the Death of Me  by Karen M. McManus. I'm really looking forward to The Love Hypothesis . I've heard nothing but good things about it, and it seems like the kind of fluffy romance that I can power through in a couple sittings. All things co...

     *sigh of relief*      I am so highly pleased with this movie. As occurs with anyone who has been horribly scarred by the Divergent or Percy Jackson  film adaptations, I was a tad nervous to see how Hazel and Gus' epic love story would translate to the screen. But have no fear, because it was excellent! 1. The Characters      I have to admit that even though I knew prior to reading the book that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort play Hazel and Gus in the movie version, my brain still didn't know quite what to do when the actors didn't look like my own mental image of them. I guess I'd been picturing Hazel as sort of looking like me with darker brown hair and Gus as... like a really buff blond guy??? *insert the laughing emoji*      On a deeper level, though, I did find Gus coming off arrogant in certain scenes of the movie whereas I didn't see that at all when I read the book. The prefuneral scene especially seemed off...

     Hello all! Unfortunately (and as you are probably already aware of thanks to my incessant complaining), it is still rather frigid in my neck of the woods, and I am absolutely itching to get outside and into warmer weather. I even tried wearing shorts today when I went on a walk (a lovely 38 degrees fahrenheit). It was probably a tad too cold for that.       In other, more relevant news, hopefully I'll be starting some new ARCs soon! The current plan is read those towards the end of the month, but I am so stoked about them that I couldn't help mentioning it already.      And s peaking of mentioning things earlier than is probably necessary, I also have a very exciting bookish plan in the works for May, but I can't quite delve into the details with that yet.      Without further adieu, here is the official TBR (and respective commentary) for this week: Dune by Frank Herbert Yes, I am aware that this was on last week's ...

     I have spent many-a-solitary-hour shut up in my room reading this book, and I have to admit that I'm having mixed feelings for doing so. Per usual, I think  Legend  is overhyped, but it's certainly not bad for a debut novel.      Legend , sent in a futuristic Los Angeles, is told from the perspectives of two characters from wildly different backgrounds: June Iparis, a prodigy of the Republic's military-based schooling system, and Day, a wanted criminal who causes trouble for the very country that June has dedicated her life to. After Day supposedly kills her brother, June is tasked with tracking him down and arresting him. She goes undercover and spends a few days on the streets looking for information on Day. Day saves June from a street fight, but she doesn't know who he is until she's spent a few days with him already. Despite having feelings for Day, she comes up with a plan for him to be captured and succeeds. In the process, his mother ...