The Monthly Digest: January 2015

Welcome back to The Monthly Digest here at Late Nights with Good Books. With these posts I hope to recap everything reading- and blogging-related for the past month.

Books I Read

Favorite Read from January:

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Notable Quote from January:
They grew up on the outside of society. They weren't looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.

―S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

On The Blog

January Reviews:

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Princess of Thorns by Stacey Jay

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin

The Young Elites by Marie Lu

January Features:

The Monthly Digest: November & December 2014

Showcase Sunday #21
2014 End of the Year Book Survey

New Resolutions, New Year

Top Ten 2014 Releases I Meant to Read 

Ready to Become a Fan of... Sarah Addison Allen

Top Ten Most Anticipated Debut Novels For 2015

In My Life

1. I participated in this year's Mock Awards held by my library system. Our winners were: Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett (Caldecott), The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier (Newbury), and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton (Printz).

2. Classes started up again for me. This semester I'm taking classes on the public library, collection development, and young adult literature. The good news is that I'm excited for all three of my classes. The bad news is that I will have a ton of reading and writing for the next few months. I'm just hoping I can find a way to balance everything so I don't end up with another blogging hiatus.

3. I attended a Summer Library Program workshop through my job that was so inspirational. It helped me to think about new ways to encourage literacy in children and ways to make kids want to come to the library. Plus, I met a few awesome people there.

4. I started listening to the Serial podcast and I'm hooked. It's much easier to and it makes the time go by much faster than just watching TV does (I'm checking the clock every few minutes now, rather than every few seconds). Though I'm not sure what I'll do once I finish Serial...

5. As this posts, I'll be on my way to ALA-Midwinter. Prior plans fell through, so now I'm only attending for the day, but I'm still excited about it. I'll have a recap up within a week or two.

How was your January?

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Review: The Young Elites by Marie Lu

The Young Elites by Marie Lu

Series: The Young Elites, #1

Published: 2014,

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Format: Hardcover

Source: Library

Goodreads · Amazon · Barnes & Noble

Energy courses through me in relentless waves, feeding me even as I try to ignore the flood of power in my veins. In spite of everything, I feel a strange sense of glee.

All this chaos is of my own creation.

Although she survived the blood fever that crippled her country’s population, Adelina Amouteru is still suffering from its effects. Of everyone who became infected from the plague, only children survived, but their survival came at a price: physical disfigurements that has left them objects of pity and fear, and given them the collective name of Malfettos. Adelina herself is now silver-haired and missing an eye. A byproduct of the disease also gave some Malfettos supernatural powers, and those special Malfettos are referred to as the Young Elites.

The stigma surrounding Malfettos has ensured that they’re now essentially second-class citizens, even within their own families. Adelina has spent most of her life watching her father favor her younger, beautiful sister Violetta, who is everything that Adelina was supposed to be. She’s unwillingly put up with her family until she learns that she’s to be given away as a mistress to an older wealthy man - her status as a Malfetto ensures that she could never be properly married. Deciding that she can no longer bear this treatment, Adelina runs away and eventually finds herself under the protection of the Dagger Society, a small group of Young Elites. From them she learns that she possesses powers beyond reckoning. Enzo Valenciano, the leader of the Dagger Society, is none other than the dethroned heir of the throne, who gives his fellow society members the chance to retaliate against all those who have wronged them in the past.

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Review: Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin

Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin

Published: 2014, Feiwel & Friends

Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary

Format: Hardcover

Source: Library

Goodreads · Amazon · Barnes & Noble

Where are you, Rain?

My heart starts to pound.

Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen.

The most important things according to Rose Howard are following the rules, homonyms, prime numbers, and her dog, Rain. Rose has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of high-functioning autism. To make sense of her life, the things she enjoys become almost an obsession. Despite the fact that she has no real friends and a father is unable to cope with her needs, Rose has Rain and so is happy. So when Rain disappears the night of a particularly intense hurricane, Rose is devastated and puts all of her energy into finding Rain again.

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Top Ten Most Anticipated Debut Novels For 2015

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week is a freebie week, so I decided to go back to a prompt from earlier this year that I hadn't posted yet: my top ten most anticipated debut novels for 2015.

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard 
Monstrous by MarcyKate Connolly 
A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas 

The Storyspinner by Becky Wallace 

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee 

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey 

5 to 1 by Holly Bodger 

The Witch Hunter by Virginia Boecker 

Valiant by Sarah McGuire 

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes 

A little late, but here's my list. Hoping to get to many of these this year!

What 2015 debuts are you looking forward to?

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Review: I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Published: 2014, Dial

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Format: Hardcover

Source: Library

Goodreads · Amazon · Barnes & Noble

I don’t know how this can be but it can: A painting is both exactly the same and entirely different every single time you look at it. That’s the way it is between Jude and me now.

As children, fraternal twins Noah and Jude were incredibly close. So close, in fact, that they referred to themselves as NoahandJude, one soul divided between two bodies. But their thirteenth year is one of major changes for both of them, and the tragedies of their lives cause the twins’ relationship to fracture. At sixteen, the twins have seemingly lost their connection with one another, and both are so damaged, so bitter, so hopeless, that reconciliation seems impossible. A mutual love of art and creation that helped make Noah and Jude inseparable, and nothing short of rekindling that love will allow them to forgive each other and begin the slow healing process.

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Ready to Become a Fan of... Sarah Addison Allen

Ready to Become a Fan of... focuses on those authors new and old whose works I have every intention of eventually reading, but haven't been able to devote the time to just yet. By discussing authors and their works that I'm sure I'll love, given the chance, hopefully I can be more easily compelled to take the next step in not simply acquiring one of their books, but actually take the time to read it.

This month I'm putting on record that I am ready to become a fan of Sarah Addison Allen.

About the author:

New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction -- a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility. She is the author of Garden Spells (2007) The Sugar Queen (2008) The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010) The Peach Keeper (2011), Lost Lake (2014), and First Frost (2015). (Modified from Goodreads)

Work I'm most looking forward to reading:

Garden Spells

The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.

For nearly a decade, 34-year-old Claire Waverley, at peace with her family inheritance, has lived in the house alone, embracing the spirit of the grandmother who raised her, ruing her mother's unfortunate destiny and seemingly unconcerned about the fate of her rebellious sister, Sydney, who freed herself long ago from their small town's constraints. Using her grandmother's mystical culinary traditions, Claire has built a successful catering business -- and a carefully controlled, utterly predictable life -- upon the family's peculiar gift for making life-altering delicacies: lilac jelly to engender humility, for instance, or rose geranium wine to call up fond memories. Garden Spells reveals what happens when Sydney returns to Bascom with her young daughter, turning Claire's routine existence upside down. With Sydney's homecoming, the magic that the quiet caterer has measured into recipes to shape the thoughts and moods of others begins to influence Claire's own emotions in terrifying and delightful ways.

As the sisters reconnect and learn to support one another, each finds romance where she least expects it, while Sydney's child, Bay, discovers both the safe home she has longed for and her own surprising gifts. With the help of their elderly cousin Evanelle, endowed with her own uncanny skills, the Waverley women redeem the past, embrace the present, and take a joyful leap into the future. (Goodreads)

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Top Ten 2014 Releases I Meant to Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week we're listing the books those 2014 releases we meant to read, but somehow never got around to over the past year. 

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — So convinced was I that I'd love this that I went and bought a hardcover. I'm still pretty sure I'll love it when I get around to reading it.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown — I own the Kindle version of this. With the recent publication of the sequel Golden Son, now sounds like the perfect time to read this YA/Adult dystopian crossover.

Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley — Everyone seems to have strong opinions on this one (mostly positive), and I can't wait to add mine to the mix. Very interested in this story about the struggles a girl must endure to join a military academy.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge — I also own the hardcover of this (though I was gifted it). This fairy-tale retelling sounds like everything I should love in a story, and with the companion novel Crimson Bound releasing later this year, it's time to read Cruel Beauty.

Stolen Songbird by Danielle L. Jensen  — I own the Kindle edition of this. I'm not actually quite sure about the status of the sequels for this series, since the first was published by the now cancelled Strange Chemistry, but I've nevertheless intrigued by this debut.
 

Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch — This is a YA fantasy that promises political intrigue, a magical world, and a fighting female protagonist. Of course I'll be reading this one! 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel — Everyone seems to be impressed by this well-written, post-apocalyptic tale. I'm always happy to see speculative fiction works become mainstream, so I'll be checking this one out soon.

The Art of Lainey by Paula Stokes — This sounds so freaking adorable. And I'm always down for books that allude to classics (in this case Sun Tzu's The Art of War). I'm just waiting for the right occasion to read a fluffy book.

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine  — Historical fiction and fairy-tale retellings go together so well, or at least they have in my reading experience. I love the idea of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" taking place during the 1920s. 

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson — This one I had borrowed briefly from the library before needing to return it again. But I will be checking this out again soon. There's been a lot of award buzz over this, and it sounds like a powerful book.

What 2014 releases do you still need to read?

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Review: Princess of Thorns by Stacey Jay

Princess of Thorns by Stacey Jay

Published: December 9, 2014, Delacorte Press

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Format: eARC

Source: Publisher via Netgalley

Goodreads · Amazon · Barnes & Noble

A broken promise breaks something inside of you, leaving less of you than there was before.

In Jay’s continuation of Charles Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty,” Sleeping Beauty and her family never receive their happily-ever-after ending. The prince is killed, and Sleeping Beauty and her two children are locked up by the ogre queen, Queen Ekeeta, and her people, who have effectively taken control of Norvere after the old king died. Rather than allowing herself and her children to be sacrificed to the ogres’ magic, Sleeping Beauty kills herself, bestowing her daughter Aurora with the fairy blessings of bravery, mercy, and strength in the process. Aurora and her younger brother Jor then escape and hide in separate parts of the country under the protection of the fey.

Over the following decade, they are hunted relentlessly by the ogres. For ogre prophecy tells of the rise of a living darkness that will consume the planet and allow all souls - ogres and human alike - to rest in peace for eternity. For this prophecy to come to fruition, the souls of the briar-born children (descendents of the Sleeping Beauty) must be collected. When Aurora learns that Jor has been captured by the ogres and will likely be used to help usher in the age of living darkness, she comes out of hiding and seeks a way to end the ogres’ reign once and for all.

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