Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you’d like to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This week’s teaser comes from The Memory Thief by Lauren Mansy.

When I see the letter nailed to my door, I know something is terribly wrong. The envelope is covered in fancy handwriting and sealed with a wax stamp the color of dried blood. I don’t wonder who it’s from because only the Minders use red ink — and they never send good news.

This is the first paragraph of the book, a new ARC I got from NetGalley. I’m hooked!

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Top Ten Favorite Snacks to Eat While Reading

This is a funny one for this week! And not a particularly good topic for me since I have been trying to eat a bit better, so I’m only going to give you five this week. I’m trying to be good, but I still have my vices!

1. Tortilla chips and salsa – my go-to snack food. It’s definitely my favorite.
2. Buffalo chicken dip (and chips) – so cheesy and spicy and good!
3. Popcorn – butter flavored is good, white cheddar is even better.
4. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream – yummy!
5. Anything cookies & cream – whether in ice cream or just actual Oreo cookies.

That’s it for me! Please share your teasers and top tens (and recipes if you got ’em 🙂 ) in the comments!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This week’s teaser comes from Spell Bound by Rachel Hawkins:

I had no idea what time it was, but my body told me it was roughly “Ouch, This Is Way Too Early” o’clock. I’d only gotten a few hours of sleep. After Dad’s announcement that I’d be heading to the freaking Underworld the next day, no one had really been in the sleeping mood.

Hmm. I probably wouldn’t be in a sleeping mood either, Sophie.

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Top Ten Books On My TBR That I’m Avoiding

In all fairness, I don’t think that I avoid books all that much. It’s more that I’m just easily distracted by the next shiny thing, combined with scatterbrained enough that I have no idea what’s going on from day to day. I actually did finally read one of the books I was sort of avoiding – Brave New World. So yay! I think I will instead go through my GoodReads TBR and see what has been on there the longest.

1. Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier – I had started Marillier’s Sevenwaters series, although I haven’t finished it yet (it’s on the list!). This is not from that series, but is another one. Her style is so beautiful, so this one will get read eventually.
2. Beauty Sleep: A Retelling of Sleeping Beauty by Cameron Dokey – I went through a major fairy tale retelling phase a few years ago. This author was recommended to me and I immediately put all of her retellings on my TBR – and then never read them. Sigh.
3. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George – Another one of those fairy tale retellings I never got too. This was the first book in a trilogy based off of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. One day maybe.
4. Tiger Lily by Jody Lynn Anderson – Yet another retelling (I told you I wen through quite the phase!), this time a retelling of Peter Pan, but from Tiger Lily’s perspective.
5. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz – I fell in love with this one when I first saw the title and then just never tracked it down. I’ve heard many good things about it, but I do worry that it won’t live up to the hype.
6. The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud – This is the second book in Stroud’s Bartimaeus series. I read the first one. I even own a copy of the second one. Still haven’t read it. Not sure why.
7. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville – Another one that I own and haven’t read yet. I saw this book on a list of best books of science-fiction a while back and picked it up at the used book store.
8. Arrow’s Flight by Mercedes Lackey – This is another book where I read the first book in the series, but stalled on book two. This is why the “Complete the Series” challenge was created – I’m really bad at this! This is the second book in the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, the gateway into the larger Valdemar collection as a whole, and there are over 40 of them. Maybe that’s what I find so daunting?
9. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein – This is a book that really made the rounds around the blogosphere several years ago that I never got around to reading. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, so I should probably pick it up sometime soon.
10. Legend by Marie Lu – I first found out about Marie Lu when I saw her speak at YallFest. I picked up a copy of this book at the festival but then . . . you guessed it, I never read it. I’m really bad about that!

That’s it for teasers and top tens this week. Please leave yours in comments!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This week’s teaser is from Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins. This is the second book in the Hex Hall series.

Dad wasn’t around the next morning. I woke up early and took a marathon shower. Trust me: if you’d spent the last nine months sharing a bathroom with all manner of supernatural creatures, you’d be pretty psyched about a private shower too.

I’m sure I would, Sophie. I’m sure I would.

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Top Ten Books I Enjoyed That Were Outside My Comfort Zone

As I established before, there are very few books or genres that I absolutely won’t read or that I avoid like the plague. That said, there are some that are very rare for me to read, or that just aren’t my go-to, so that’s what I’ll list here. Some of these are going waaaaaay back before my blogging days, so I don’t have reviews for all of them. I really should go back and re-read/re-review some of them!

1. The Art of Taxidermy by Sharon Kernot – This was a book of poetry that I reviewed for NetGalley a while back. I don’t usually read poetry, or at least I haven’t since my college days, but this was just a beautiful read. You can see my review here.
2. Lock Every Door by Riley Sager – To be honest, most of what I read tends to be either fantasy, YA, or both. I got to read this for a blog tour and it has changed my mind completely about reading contemporary mysteries and/or suspense. Check out the review here.
3. What We Do For Love by Anne Pfeffer – Another blog tour book. I love signing up for these tours and reviews; it almost always introduces me to something I may not have found for myself. This is categorized as “chick lit,” which is a term I hate, but also a genre I hardly ever read. This book was just so lovely though! Tour post can be found here.
4. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie – I originally read this back when I did the podcast, I believe as part of our Banned Books Week celebration. This was contemporary as well as memoir, two things I don’t typically read.
5. The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak – I will actually say that this book did make me feel uncomfortable, but it was supposed to. While this is YA, it is a gritty, historical fiction as well, which is not always in my wheelhouse.
6. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga – I got this book off of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. It was nothing like what I usually read and, as such, I was pretty blown away by it. I did review this one, but back on my old blog. You can read it here. Also, finding that old blog – what a blast from the past! It didn’t last long at all, but I sure had fun putting it together!
7. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore – Oh, this book! It was so unlike anything I had read before. A tragic, true story about girls slowly dying from radium poisoning, I had picked this up because it was a group book for the Seasonal Reading Challenge over at GoodReads. I know I would never have even heard of it otherwise, but I was so glad I got to read it! Review here.
8. The Circle by Dave Eggers – I only read this because I saw that it was going to be a movie with Emma Watson (who I love) and Tom Hanks (who I also love). The movie ended up being meh (although I did like it), but the book was amazing. Probably became one of my favorites. Review here.
9. You’re Never Weird on the Internet by Felicia Day – I’m including this because of the fact that I don’t usually read memoirs, but to be fair, I would have probably read this anyway. I absolutely love Felicia Day. She is one of my Internet heroes and as soon as I heard she was writing a book, I got it. Review here.
10. Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman – Oh, the Sandman series. I had never read graphic novels or comic books much, but I had heard so much about this and was already a fan of Neil Gaiman, I gave it a try. It is DARK! And very DISTURBING! It also really made me want to pursue graphic novels more, although I haven’t had a chance to do so much yet.

And there you have it! My teaser and top ten for this Tuesday. Please leave yours in comments!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This week’s teaser comes from A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer.

I wonder what path the curse would have taken if we had arrived a minute later and found Harper dead.

I’m so furious that I’m tempted to nock another arrow and find out.

I had preordered this back when it first came out and, thanks to the Disney-A-Thon readathon, I am finally getting around to reading it! Only just started it yesterday, but I’m digging it so far!

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Top Ten Books That I Want In My Personal Library

I have a lot of physical copies of books, but I have been trending towards reading mostly ebooks lately, mostly for convenience. So this list is of books that I currently only have an ebook version of that I would like to get a hardcopy of.

1. The Rules for Disappearing by Ashley Elston
2. The Doorknob Society by M.J. Fletcher
3. Stain by A.G. Howard
4. These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
5. The Shadow Watch by S.A. Klopfenstein
6. You Were Here by Cori McCarthy
7. Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
8. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke
9. Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
10. Comes the Night by Norah Wilson and Heather Doherty

Please leave your teasers and/or top tens in comments!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

Today’s teaser comes from Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins:

But this room looked like it had been decorated by the unholy lovechild of Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake.

A short quote, but it made me laugh. Also, yes, this is yet another book that I started last night. We had a power outage and since I didn’t want to use any of my devices (trying to conserve the batteries), I picked up a paperback (or as my friend Jess calls them, a dead tree copy). This was another series I had wanted to try to finish, so I figured why not. It’s a fairly light read.

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Favorite Tropes

This one was actually pretty easy for me. Over the years, I have tended to gravitate towards a lot of the same tropes or themes. I’ve been trying to break out of that a bit, but it’s hard!

1. Boarding Schools – Preferably magical, but I like non-magical ones as well. When I was a kid, I always wanted to go to one, so I guess I live vicariously through books now.
2. Road Trips – I love a good road trip, but I like reading about them a lot as well. Especially if the characters are searching for a specific person or a specific thing.
3. Libraries – Anything that connects to a library, especially a magical one, is solid for me. I think libraries are magical anyway, but put a portal to another world in one, and I am good to go.
4. Scavenger Hunts – This one is a bit different and I haven’t seen it as much, but I love it. It also typically goes along with a Road Trip. My favorite example is 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. I love that book!
5. Urban Exploration – I love big cities. They always have a history to them that is wide a varied, usually with a darkness lurking underneath.
6. Strong Platonic Friendships – Not every “couple” needs to fall in love, okay? My favorite example is Harry Potter and Hermione Granger (from the books, not the movies). So many people wanted them to end up as a couple, but to me, it was better that they were best friends. What’s wrong with being besties?
7. Heists – This is a new one for me, probably from some of the newer books I’ve picked up this year. I’ve started to really dig that Mission Impossible vibe, which is funny since I’ve never really liked those movies all that much.
8. Starting Over – Maybe this is because I have gone through this process myself, but I like seeing a character who has faced a lot of challenges in their lives take a chance and start over. Blank slate. Fresh start.
9. Servants – This one sounds weird, but I’m talking about something like Downton Abbey or Upstairs, Downstairs. The people who take care of the aristocracy know EVERYTHING, but they are almost always taken for granted. My examples here are TV shows, but I like this trope in books as well.
10. Chosen One: This is sometimes very cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason, and when done well, it makes for a really fun story. Bonus points if that prophesy could point to multiple people and we need to find out who the chosen one is.

Please share your teasers and/or top tens in comments!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This week’s teaser is from Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsay.

Alice clutched Sabrina as soon as the Queen left the room.

Sabrina had stuck up for her with the Queen. She couldn’t let her friend die because of her. Alice trembled at the thought of Sabrina’s pretty head on one of those spikes.

We got ourselves a dangerous Queen of Hearts, ladies and gents! Just what every Wonderland needs!

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Top Ten Settings I’d Like to See More Of

Is it weird that I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the setting when I read? Unless the setting is so prominent, it’s almost a character in the story, I don’t really focus much on them. Here are five that I enjoy.

1. New York City – My favorite place in the world. I like stories set in any big city, but New York holds a special place in my heart.
2. Small, quirky New England towns – I’m a big fan of the TV show Gilmore Girls and would love to visit Stars Hollow. Reading about a town like that is almost as good.
3. Big, abandoned mansions – Bonus points if they are haunted in any way, shape, or form. I like a big, spooky house!
4. Underground hideaways – Especially if they are under big cities or civilizations, double-especially if there are rumors about them, but no one has found them yet. Except our plucky main character, of course.
5. Theaters – As a theater junkie, I love stories set in a theater. So much tradition and culture, and so many things you can do with it.

Please leave your teasers and top tens in comments!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week’s teaser comes from Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas.

Nesryn knew.

She knew it hadn’t been mere interest that had prompted Chaol to ask her to talk to him last night, but guilt.

Hmmmm . . . wonder why someone might be feeling guilty? You’ll have to read to find out!

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Auto-Buy Authors

This one was actually a bit difficult for me, because I don’t buy as many books as I used to. I am very lucky that my local library has a really big ebook selection, which between that and all the review copies I’ve been getting, has kept me pretty busy. Here are a bunch of authors that I enjoy and would typically try to buy as soon as I could.

1. A.G. Howard – Author of the Splintered series, RoseBlood, and Stain
2. John Green – Author of Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, and several others
3. Hank Green – Author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
4. Mark Oshiro – Author of Anger is a Gift
5. Chuck Wendig – Author of the Miriam Black series, the Heartland series, Wanderers, and several others
6. Neil Gaiman – Co-Author of Good Omens. Author of American Gods, The Graveyard Book, the Sandman series, and many others.
7. Cassandra Clare – Author of the Shadowhunters series (multiple series)
8. Dianne Sylvan – Author of the Shadow World series, as well as several neo-pagan non-fiction books
9. Maureen Johnson – Author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Suite Scarlet, the Shades of London series, and many others
10. Erin Morgenstern – Author of The Night Circus and the upcoming The Starless Sea

Those are my teasers and top tens for this week. Please leave yours in comments!

Also, as a reminder, I am doing a giveaway to celebrate hitting 500 followers on this blog. If you want to sign up, please check out this post to do so. 🙂