Tag: fantasy

The Spook’s Apprentice

I’ve had a copy of Joseph Delaney’s The Spook’s Apprentice for a couple of years now, and only remembered it last week, when I was digging through my shelves of TBR books for some books to read for Halloween. I remember I looked through a list of books that other Harry Potter fans were reading post-Harry Potter, and this book, the first in a series called The Wardstone Chronicles, came highly recommended.

I hadn’t planned on a Halloween theme for the 24-hour Readathon, but I got home late that day from seeing the Galeón de Andalucía at the South Harbor and had no time to pre-select books for the Readathon. Since the pile of scary books was already sitting on my desk, I just grabbed a bunch of them so I could sign up in the nick of time.

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Bartimaeus is back!

I loved Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy! While I was deeply satisfied with the series, I was really sad (read: in tears!) to see it end!

This morning, a friend of mine (thank you, Cecille!) tagged me in a Facebook post announcing something I did not see coming — another Bartimaeus novel! Squee!

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Back to the Underland

Last month, I blogged about how much I loved Suzanne Collins‘ Underland Chronicles after I read the first three books right before Mockingjay was released. I must confess the series took me by surprise; way before I discovered the Hunger Games series, I’d been seeing the Underland Chronicles in the bookstores and never really thought of picking them up. Then I managed to forage two books out of the bargain bins, and when I finally decided to read them, I found them utterly engrossing!

I read straight on from books 1-3: Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, and Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods. I had trouble finding copies of the next books in the series, Gregor and the Marks of Secret and Gregor and the Code of the Claw so I momentarily had to stop reading the series, but some wonderful friends at Scholastic (yay, thanks Ms. Joyce and Ms. Roselle!) gifted me with books 4 and 5, and as soon as the craziness of the past couple of weeks subsided, I happily dug into the remainder of the Underland Chronicles.

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The Red Pyramid

Egyptian culture has always been a special interest of mine since I was a high school sophomore, when most of our subjects for the year were tied up with Afro-Asian civilization. One quarter of that school year was devoted to Egypt, and I remember being fascinated with the history of pharaohs in Social Studies class (my personal favorite was Hatshepsut!), and Egyptian mythology and the concept of afterlife in Literature class.

I actually like Egyptian mythology over Greek mythology so even though I wasn’t all that fond of the Percy Jackson series, I was eager to try out The Red Pyramid, the first book in Rick Riordan’s new series, The Kane Chronicles.

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Suzanne Collins Marathon


Still counting down to Mockingjay!

In an attempt to slake my excitement over Mockingjay, I brought out all the Suzanne Collins books in my possession (and bought one more) and have been reading voraciously for the past five days. I started with Gregor the Overlander, the first book of the Underland Chronicles last Friday, but I didn’t have book 2  yet so I decided to reread Hunger Games and Catching Fire on Saturday. By Sunday, I was already reaching for the copy of Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane that I’d bought the day before. And then I started reading Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods yesterday, and now I’m out of the Underland Chronicles, so the marathon’s on hold (at least until I can find myself copies of Gregor and the Marks of Secret and Gregor and the Code of the Claw).

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