Tag / 30 days

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What book do you love and hate at the same time?

This is a tough one because there are not a lot of books that I love and hate but if I had to choose one then I would say that the book that I love and hate at the same time would be Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver.

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Synopsis: For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12—”Cupid Day”—should be one big party, a day of valentines and roses and the privileges that come with being at the top of the social pyramid. And it is…until she dies in a terrible accident that night.

However, she still wakes up the next morning. In fact, Sam lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she ever imagined.

I love this book for the fact that it plays with time in a loop and the main character keeps repeating the same day over and over again until she can figure out how to fix it. Pretty much anything involving time-travel or time looping with cause and effect scenarios will have me hooked. I hate it because of how long it takes her to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it (and the fact that it came to this whole looping of time for her to realize how brutal she was to people and what she didn’t notice before). The ending was acceptable though so I do come back to liking it there.

I will give you a break if you can’t think of a book you both love and hate but if you do, make sure to comment so we can talk about it 🙂

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What book did you hate?

Well it is already day eleven of the book challenge and I knew we would eventually get to a topic about disliking a book. I don’t like to speak negatively about books because they are my escape but alas I have to choose one. I feel like I might get some backlash for my choice, but in all honesty, I really did not enjoy All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

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Synopsis:
Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

I found this book to be very long and drawn out with nothing to keep me captivated. It was telling the story from the two different perspectives and they were equally as boring.  You would think that one would have a somewhat interesting life but nope can’t have that. The way they ended it was also really bad and made me feel awful for wasting time to finish it. I thought it would be good from all the hype about it but in the end I was just let down. I know others might like it so just remember that it is just my opinion.

If you had to choose one book that you hate, what would it be? Let me know in the comments! Later book worms 🙂

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What book reminds you of home?

I think the book that reminds me of home is Paper Towns by John Green. Now you might say ,”why that book, the main character is trying to escape their home” and that is partially why I chose it…. read on my bookworms.

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Synopsis: Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew…

The reason this book reminds me of home is because all my life I wanted to escape my hometown and just go travel the world and get away. But once I had explored and been out the world, I realized that home will always be home. No matter what happens or what you have done, you can always go home. This may just be how I feel because I have an amazing family that loves and supports me. But so did Quentin and he still went off in exploration to find this girl of his dreams. And when he realized that she may not be what he thought she was, he was able to return home and move on. The group of friends that go with him also remind me of my friends back home who are family to me.

This one is really cool and I would love to hear what book makes you guys think of home! Let me know if the comments below 🙂

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

I participated in a book club in college and one of the books chosen seemed like it would be boring. I remember not wanting to read it but was committed to the book club so I bought it and read it anyways. The book was called The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

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The book really surprised me. It was very historical and set in a kind or Merchant of Venice age.

Here is a synopsis: Barcelona, 1945 – just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

The book was actually very exciting. Daniel had a curiosity that could not be satisfied and needed to find out everything about Julian Carax. It starts out a little slow but eventually becomes a murder mystery and Daniel’s intrigue for more pushes him past boundaries and into places he would never have dreamt of before reading the work of Julian. Th author does like to go very in depth into his descriptions but the book is worth the read in my eyes.

Let me know what book surprised you in the comments! Talk to you soon book worms 🙂

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What is the most overrated book?

Ok bookworms, don’t get mad at me for this one because I know there are a lot of fandoms out there and a lot of you probably like this one. The most overrated book in my opinion is Twilight by Stephanie Meyers (the whole series actually).

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I feel like everyone knows the synopsis of this book but I will still put one just in case.

Synopsis: In the first book of the Twilight Saga, internationally bestselling author Stephenie Meyer introduces Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, a pair of star-crossed lovers whose forbidden relationship ripens against the backdrop of small-town suspicion and a mysterious coven of vampires. This is a love story with bite.

Now don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the book and read the entire series in high school. But the reason I think this book is very overrated is because it received so much attention from the media and was over sexualized with actors/actresses (plus it started the whole vampire fetish thing that went on for awhile).

Stephanie Meyers is a brilliant writer and knows exactly what to say in her books to draw her audience in. She knows how to get a teen girl’s blood pumping with promise of forbidden love and fangs/fur.

Let me know what you think is the most overrated book in the comments! I am very curious to see what everyone else thinks on this topic 🙂

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What book makes you laugh?

Alright, so I know that these technically aren’t books, but they are graphics novels and these have made me laugh so hard that I snorted and spit out my drink. I present to you the Deadpool Complete Collections Vol 1 & 2 !

The art style is phenomenal and the way the writer portrays dead pool as this cocky mercenary that has no regard for trivial things and just does what he wants when he wants is just too good to be true. There are lots of side characters that Deadpool meets along the way and other recognized superheroes that he either comes into combat with or teams up with. Between these two graphic novels, there are about 15-17 issues.

I would recommend these to my fellow superhero nerds out there. They will give you a laugh and get you that much more excited for Deadpool 2 (which should be coming out in 2018).

Now let me know what book makes you laugh in the comments down below. Talk to you later bookworms!

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What book makes you feel sad?

Back to it with day six of the book challenge. So the book that I chose that makes me sad is Still Alice by Lisa Genova. This book follows the life of Alice Howland after she finds out that she has Alzheimer’s.

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Synopsis: Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind…

It was very interesting to see how she dealt with this disease. Alzheimers for me is a very scary disease and is actually my biggest fear. My grandmother had it and it was awful to see someone just deteriorate to the point of not knowing the people around her whom she had known and loved her entire life. To put yourself in those shoes and imagine how you would just disappear as a person is how this book is. You live through Alice losing herself. She forgets her routines and how to think and comprehend for basic daily tasks. She knows its happening and then she doesn’t know its happening and its really sad. Her family struggles through with her and her descent into nothingness. Along the way it happens to bring her daughter and her closer together.

There was a movie made based on this book and Julianne Moor played Alice. I saw the movie and I have to admit that she did an exceptional job, especially at the part where she gives a speech in Harvard University to celebrate that she is and will be her no matter what a disease has to say about it.

If you like sad reads (it really is a very good book, just hit home for me), you can find this book on Goodreads or Amazon and you can find Lisa Genova on Twitter. Stay tuned for more of the book challenge and I will talk to you soon bookworms!

 

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What book makes you happy?

The book that makes me happy is The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I read it in college and just couldn’t help but smile. The entwined stories of a bunch of people and how they come together in this story just gives you hope for the good in the world.

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Short Synopsis: Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother’s loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn’t know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives…

The book tells you the storyline of 3 different main characters and talks about their lives and how they are all looking for love in different ways. It was beautifully written and full of kindness towards others. I love Leo’s character. He reminds me of an old man I used to deliver newspapers to when I was a kid. And the innocence of Alma just trying to get a happy ending for her mother is the sweetest thing.

This book will just make you very happy by the end and I would strongly recommend giving it a chance. It is less than 200 pages too so not a very big commitment.

You can find it on Goodreads or Amazon. If you wish to see the other topics of the book challenge, check out my post called 30 Day Book Challenge! Talk to you later bookworms.

 

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

Favourite book of your favourite series?

Well this one is easy because I talked about it yesterday. My favourite book of my favourite series is Red Rising because it set the bar for the whole series and I just couldn’t put it down. This book was recommended to me by my good friend Neil Montgomery. He reads a lot of science-fi and always has great recommendations for books of this genre.

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The trials and challenges that Darrow endures to get up the ranks and blend in as one of society’s most favoured is an adventurous and exciting journey with lots of plot twists. The book features a tiered list of the different colours and how they are ranked in the society. Red is the lowest colour and Gold is the highest. Darrow is from the Red colony and his goal is to get in with and be accepted by the Gold’s so that he can take them down from the top. He is undertaken as a member of the refugee rebellion and sent into the school of the upper class as a spy to observe and learn so that he can gain their trust. Darrow is a natural leader and he makes many friends and allies along his journey to the top.

I think this book is amazing so I would strongly recommend to give it a shot if you like fantasy, science-fi, adventure, thriller, or action genres. The series recently came out with a new book called Iron Gold which I have not purchased yet but will be doing very soon (or I will ask for it for Christmas if I can wait that long). Pierce Brown is a great author and I hope he continues to write masterpieces 😛

If you wish to see what’s next on the book challenge, check out the post here: 30 Day Book Challenge!

That’s it for this post but talk to you soon bookworms!

by Erik McManus | Breakeven Books

What is your favourite book series?

Day 3 of the book challenge and I am very excited about this one because I get to share with you a book trilogy that is my all time favourite series and I really think everyone should read it at some point in their lives. So without further ado, I introduce to you the Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown.

This series is an action packed thrill ride. It is like the hunger games on crack. The setting of the book is in space and it has a roman god / greek mythology theme to it with lots of survival and rebellion. There are so many awesome characters in this book series and my favourite character is Sevro (not the main character). If you read the series, you will see why he is the best (I don’t want to give any of the awesomeness away). Here is a quote from the first chapter of Red Rising,

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”

“I live for you,” I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

Everything about this series just gets my adrenaline rushing when I read it. If they turn this series into movies, I will be thrilled and fearful at the same time. I would love to see it come to life but I know I will be very critical since its my favourite series so I hope they can do it justice on the big screen.

What is your favorite book series? Let me know in the comments!