Must-Read Monday: House of Hades by Rick Riordan

Today's installment is not even out for general readers until 10/8, but I'm putting it out a week in advance so you all have time to preorder!

In the fourth installment in Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series, we find our favorite demigods once again in numerous perils and our favorite demigod couple in the depths of Tartarus. This highly-anticipated books has readers anxiously awaiting its over 600 pages next Tuesday.

In the meantime, if you are new to the Percy Jackson books (or even if you aren't), start a marathon binge read of all eight previous books featuring our favorite Son of Poseiden. I'm moving on to Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters tonight!

The Rewrite Woman Returns

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry for the extended hiatus, but I got wrapped up in working and *pause for applause* writing the first draft of my novel! I completed it at the end of August and have now made my way back to my lovely blog. I want to let you all know that I am beginning a few new sections. Here's my first one: Must-Read Mondays. 

My TBR pile grows exponentially, but on MRM I want to feature a book that either I am dying to read or have read and think you all mudt read if you haven't already. That being said, my first pick is from my own TBR pile and that is Cuckoo's  Calling by Robert Galbraith, who (if you didn't already know) is really J.K. Rowling. This book has skyrocketted to the top of the bestseller's list and I am eager to see the second post-Potter book from Rowling. Hopefully this detective fiction book is as good as I am hearing it is! 

I hope to get a few reviews up in the next few weeks as well as a couple articles on writing and reading in school. Since school is back in session and my role as guest-teacher has been renewed, I hope to include some commentary on my own experiences! I'm eager for the next phase of the blog as write and write and write and read and read and read. Happy Monday everyone! 

Updates: Posting and Site Construction

Hey Everyone! Hope you're all enjoying your lovely summer evening! Here's just a couple of brief updates:

1) Weekly posts: I hope to have a new review every Tuesday for you. I have tons of books that I haven't written on and I'm working on them! Next, I hope to update on Wednesdays with an Editing tip of the day. Thursdays I want to write an article on something interesting in the book/reading world. And Fridays will be an update of my TBR pile and book-related news. It's a heavy undertaking!

2) Under Construction: A new section will be headed your way in a few weeks! It's going to be a section that features my own writing! I'm working on a novel lately, which has taken a lot of my time away from the blog. I want you all to read it. :)

So just bear with me, okay? I hope you will if you're reading this! :)

Spoiler Alert: Final Installment in Sylvia Day's series, not really the Conclusion! (Review)

Synopsis:

The worldwide phenomenon continues as Eva and Gideon face the demons of their pasts and accept the consequences of their obsessive desires…

From the moment I first met Gideon Cross, I recognized something in him that I needed. Something I couldn’t resist. I also saw the dangerous and damaged soul inside—so much like my own. I was drawn to it. I needed him as surely as I needed my heart to beat.

No one knows how much he risked for me. How much I’d been threatened, or just how dark and desperate the shadow of our pasts would become.

Entwined by our secrets, we tried to defy the odds. We made our own rules and surrendered completely to the exquisite power of possession…

I give this book 4/5 stars. Entwined with You by Sylvia Day picks up where Reflected in You leaves off. A menace from Eva Tramell's past has been eliminated, but it has torn Eva and Gideon Cross apart. In this third installment, the lovers work their way back to one another privately and face adversaries in public eye when someone from Gideon's past is out to get him and police are hot on Gideon's trail. Reunited, their bond is stronger than before although Gideon's past continues to haunt him, the lingering scars threatening to create a wedge between them. But Eva is determined to stop that from happening, so she takes charge--a bold, sexy decision that yields high dividends while on a weekend getaway (if you know what I mean). Gideon and Eva believe they have started on a path to a blissful life, working through their differences, making their way back to each other, but old torments arise, attempting to drive the final dagger into Eva and Gideon's relationship.

Hop over to the Review section to read my thoughts!

Brown pens another hit: Inferno, a must-read (Review)

Dan Brown does it again! Jump on over to the Reviews page for my newest review: Dan Brown's Inferno.

Synopsis:

"Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in a hospital in the middle of the night. Disoriented and suffering from a head wound, he recalls nothing of the last thirty-six hours, including how he got there... or the origin of the macabre object that his doctors discover hidden in his belongings.

Langdon's world soon erupts into chaos, and he finds himself on the run in Florence with a stoic young woman, Sienna Brooks, whose clever maneuvering saves his life. Langdon quickly realizes that he is in possession of a series of disturbing codes created by a brilliant scientist--a genius whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written--Dante Alighieri's dark epic poem The Inferno.

Racing through such timeless locations as the Palazzo Vecchio, the Boboli Gardens, and the Duomo, Langdon and Brooks discover a network of hidden passageways and ancient secrets, as well as a terrifying new scientific paradigm that will be used either to vastly improve the quality of life on earth... or to devastate it."

Thou Shalt Not Dog-ear: Reading Rules and Personality

I found a post on Twitter the other day that led to the site BookRiot about a person's reading rules revealing personality traits. It made me think about some of my own rules and what they might say about the kind of person I am. So here's a few of my own rules.


1) No dog-earring of pages or writing in a fiction book read for fun. (As for books such as non-fiction or those used for research, either is fair game and I have dog-eared tops and bottoms of pages, with numerous sentences underlined for a killer history thesis paper. Photographic proof to come later.) However, I break the spine all the time.

2) Always stop at the end of a chapter or section. Stopping in the middle of a page makes me liable to forget where I was a reread something, freak me out, or even make me want to keep reading, which leads to:

Neutralizing the Stigma: Erasing the Covers of Boy Books and Girl Books

Last week, the Huffington Post discussed the genderizing of book covers, suggesting that covers should be more neutral to increase readership because boys would be more likely to pick up a book about a woman, by a woman, if it did not look "girly.

Author Maureen Johnson spurred the debate by tweeting: "I do wish I had a dime for every email I get that says 'Please put  a non-girly cover on your book so I can read it-- Signed, A Guy.'" Covers play a large role in decided whether to read a book (or not) and perhaps the stigma of "looking soft" distracts men from picking up an otherwise interesting thrilling ride. The treatment of male versus female writers (and readers) is a cultural problem that reflects a deeper problem in our society: the stereotypes of gender.