It's a scorchingly hot summer across the United States. I can't speak for anyone else but hot summer days make me slightly lackadaisical. The heat just seeps into your bones and slows your brain. Up until this past week I have been fervently reading and scheduling reviews for posts to come starting August up until October.

And then my brain kind of had enough. I burned myself out.

So currently I'm on a novel-reading hiatus. There are two great things about this, for me:

• When I next pick up a novel I will be excited again for the calming structure of literary fiction, for a story that I can more or less read from start to end, reading love for the writing or character or place between every line. It will be marvelous.
• I get to branch out into other things that I love but have been neglecting because sometimes I feel that I have to read only YA to keep up with everything, including my very large TBR pile. Currently I'm reading heaps of Marvel graphic novels and it's truly refreshing to read a different type of story, but a story nonetheless. I can get lost in the artwork of words and pictures. I used to read graphic novels quite a lot, but life interfered, and I'm honestly happy to be doing so again. (I'm just about finished with The Invincible Iron Man Omnibus, Vol. 1 and I'm falling in love with Tony Stark, my favorite Marvel character, all over again. What Matt Fraction does with this character [so far] is amazing, though my heart is shattering continuously.)

What do you guys do when you need a break? Blogging, reading - there's always a lot of pressure, even if most of it is self-imposed. I'd love to know what else you read when you take a bit of a hiatus from YA.

Never fear, friends, I haven't stopped completely. I had also found myself stuck in my WIP and I love to immerse myself in different story types to craft a personality, so that's part of what I'm doing. 

Keep cool, everyone. Ice cubes and tall glasses of water are your friend.

Author: John Green:
Publication Date: 01/10/2012
Publisher: Dutton
Pages: 318
Source: Purchased

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations." (Augustus Waters) 

This book is John Green at his best, which is a difficult thing, because all of John Green's books are John Green at a pretty damn high level. (I may have broken the record for repeating an author's name in a twenty-eight word sentence just here, but we'll set that aside for now.)

This is not really a review, but I'm not sure, like Augustus, that I can order my thoughts enough to put them into a mass of words that would just seem anything other than quaint and not-quite-there.

I laughed. I cried. (I cried a lot.) I nodded and gesticulated wildly on public transportation. (Sorry to the people sitting next to me on the subway.)

Even though I saw what was going to happen from miles ahead, my heart didn't care. My heart was so invested in these characters and their steadfast will to live that it just didn't care - it needed an outlet and my tear ducts were it.

This book will wrench your heart, then make you laugh inappropriately just to make you cry and smile again. Books should never have messages, but I think The Fault In Our Stars will leave you with a feeling one way or the other whether it be happy, sad, or that weird mix of bittersweet. Whatever it is, and whatever it may be, there's something for everyone.

It's my blog and I'll JKR if I want to.

I love the vivid primary colors. I love the two different fonts, but hers best of all. I love the check for voting, but an X for Barry's death. I love that there is nothing casual about the vacancy. I love her words and that this book is a delicious 500+ pages long.

Welcome back, Jo.

"Waiting on" Wednesday is a weekly event courtesy of Breaking the Spine that showcases much anticipated upcoming releases.

from goodreads: 01/22/2013

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

 Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn't just dangerous—it's a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da's death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall. 

 Somehow Victoria Schwab has a way with words, not only stringing together the most beautiful and perfectly-chosen ones, but also creating them into a story that no one else would have dared to step into and create. I absolutely adored The Near Witch (r), and so when more and more snippets of what this new series would be about made their way into the world I was ecstatic.  Librarians, books, living and breathing and the people who guard their stories. There is no way that The Archived will be anything less than stunning and imaginative, and it's a journey I cannot wait to go on.

So recently you've been browsing Twitter and Tumblr, clicking away, and adding books to your ever-increasing TBR list on Goodreads. Liking a book isn't mathematical, but there is definitely a certain something that stands out to make you add the book to your list. What are two qualities about a book (anything from the cover to the typography or a random sentence you flip to skimming over it in a store) will make you pick it up? Similarly, what two things will make you put a book back on the shelf?

This is as close to math as I'll get, but the equations will be interesting to see as they vary from person to person!

I'll give it a go:

For picking up, it will definitely be cover and the initial first couple sentences of the book (especially if I've never read a book by that author before). If I like the cover enough to pick it up then I'll read the first chapter, generally, to see what I think. This is the reason that it took me so long to buy (then read, but not to love - that was immediate) Anna and the French Kiss - that cover paired with that title just threw me off every single time. But at BEA, it's why I picked up Summer and Bird.

  

Due to the increasing trend of faceless girls (many of Sarah Dessen's books suffer from this phenomenon) and girls in dresses (simply incalculable), I'm almost more hesitant to pick a book up if I see it fitting into one of these categories. This isn't to say that I don't love these books or their covers, because that's simply not true and some are beautifully designed (Lizzie Bromley does a consistently amazing job in this), and some of the dresses directly connect to the plot. Yet seeing that kind of female archetype puts me in a place to wonder why such a strong, descriptive female character has to be featured in a dress on the cover for marketing purposes in order to do well.

                                  

What do you think?                            

In My Mailbox, hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren, allows us to share our

current reads, and books we've received/checked out/purchased over the course of the week.

I apologise in advance for the quality of the photos - by the time I got home today from work to take them I lost all natural light and had to bring a lamp around as I took them, but it was hard to juggle my DSLR (plus focus) and the lamp, so some of them are super saturated and washed out.

This is also not everything that I picked up at BEA; my mum has a pile, and there's also a bag of adult fiction and another bag of things I got at the blogger's convention. There's also a few scattered in other places, depending on where I sit to read.

I said in my last BEA-related post that the bloggers are the best thing about the whole week, and many of these books would not be possible without their assistance. Aliya, Heidi, Grace, Olivia, Jenna - the list is limitless, and you guys seriously made my week (and the lines, the crowds, the everything worth it). Thank you! :)

Warning: This post is extraordinarily image heavy.

The Dark Unwinding, Sharon Cameron

The Blessed, Tonya Hurley

Entice, Jessica Shirvington

Because It Is My Blood, Gabrielle Zevin 

Summer and Bird, Katherine Catmull

Shadows, Ilsa J. Bick (next on my TBR!)

Glass Heart, Amy Garvey (Amy is so nice)

Origin, Jessica Khoury

Carnival of Souls, Melissa Marr

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor (with Days of Blood and Starlight chapters!!)

Passion Blue, Victoria Strauss

Masque of the Red Death, Bethany Griffin

Destined, Aprilynne Pike

Unraveling, Elizabeth Norris

The Vicious Deep, Zoraida Cordova

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano, Sonia Monzano

Level 2, Lenore Appelhans (Hi, Lenore! <3)

Return to Me, Justina Chen

The Darkest Minds, Alexandra Bracken

Out of the Easy, Ruta Sepetys 

Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys (We had a John Green moment. It was fabulous.)

Fall to Pieces, Vahini Naidoo

Son, Lois Lowry (!!)

Beta, Rachel Cohn

Eve & Adam, Michael Grant & Katherine Applegate

The Turning, Francine Prose

Magisterium, Jeff Hirsch (The cover on this is hypnotising!)

Feedback, Robison Wells (Ahhh, this book!)

Who I Kissed, Janet Gurtler

Crewel, Gennifer Albin

Sanctum: Guards of the Shadowlands, Sarah Fine

Venom, Fiona Paul

Time Between Us, Tamara Ireland Stone

Can I have a moment for Tamara? Because she was amazingly sweet, and in our

discussion she not only signed a bookmark for my copy, but put a little heart

around the page number with her favorite passage. And her book is fabulous.

The Wishing Spell, Chris Colfer

Princess Academy (#2, Palace of Stone), Shannon Hale

Beautiful Lies, Jessica Warman

The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker

Point of Origin, Amanda Harvard (Lovely lady!)

Fathomless, Jackson Pearce (Who is awesome.)

The Paladin Prophecy, Mark Frost

Eternally Yours, Cate Tiernan

Becoming Holmes, Shane Peacock (Anything vaguely ACD? Yes, please.)

Chosen Ones, Tiffany Truitt

The Lifeguard, Deborah Blumenthal

Keep Holding On, Susane Colasanti

Black City, Elizabeth Richards

Endangered, Eliot Schrefer

The fact that a book exists with this topic makes me incredibly hopeful and happy.

Skinny, Donna Cooner

Cursed, Jennifer L. Armentrout

In A Glass Grimmly, Adam Gidwitz

The Spindlers, Lauren Oliver

The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater (The book I wanted most to get!)

Prodigy, Marie Lu

What's Left of Me, Kat Zhang (The book I wanted second most!)

Every Day, David Levithan (Lost my tongue the moment I saw him.)

Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Mass (Great debut fantasy.)

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce/Joe Blum (Fabulous fabulous children's book. I cried.)

The Curiosities, Maggie Stiefvater/Tessa Gratton/Brenna Yovanoff (Maggie remembered me from the Raven Boys signing; we all discussed our drawings.)

An Abundance of Katherines, John Green

Nerdfighter designed cover. DFTBA!

I have to mention that I also met the incredibly lovely and even more adorable in person Victoria Schwab, who signed a copy of The Near Witch. I was really hoping I'd get a chance to run into her. This also applies to Aimée Carter (so sweet)!

Purchased/Gifted/Won:

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein (20% off coupon. Thanks, B&N!)

Dreamless, Josephine Angelini

Trafficked, Kim Purcell

The Immortal Rules, Julie Kagawa

Rapture, Lauren Kate (Thank you, Random House!)

From the publisher:

Outpost, Ann Aguirre

My Book of Life by Angel, Martine Leavitt (Especially looking forward to this.)

Thank you so much, Macmillan! :) I'm pretty consistently impressed with their titles, so this should be good.

If you made it to the bottom, I think you get a gold star. And a nap. Thanks for visiting, everyone! And I have a handful of these reviews written already, and scheduled for closer to the publication date so keep checking back for them. Have a great weekend, friends!

I've been looking for a way to incorporate writing into this blog without seeming too heavy handed, and I think this may be the right way to do it. Once a month I'm aiming to have a list of songs available for you to choose from. The song with the most votes will be song that I will then write a 200-500 word drabble around. I take liberties with song interpretations, so though the link may not be blatantly obvious it will be there, and when I post the drabble I will explain in a sentence or two how the piece came about.

The songs will not always be in English, they will not always have lyrics - but just choose the one that speaks to you the most. 

For the inaugural post, I've chosen to use the following parameters:

• Time period: 2000-2005
• Male musicians
• Acoustic performance

To get to the YouTube links, add "www.youtube.com/watch?v=" before the code in the poll.

Song prompt choices: (YouTube link included for listening.)
	Running, Jason Mraz (Zi9YCOVEuvY)
	Weight Of It All, Matt Nathanson (3wgVLlRF2xU)
	Ghost / Beams of Light, Howie Day (LCZIRLsM6lo)
	Belief, Gavin DeGraw (duE9Di-_z30)
	Cinco Ojos / Starry Night, Zox (XhLDuaaWD28)
pollcode.com free polls

Incidentally, I've either seen all of these musicians live, worked for them on tour, or both. They are fantastic. I hope you enjoy and thanks for participating!

"Waiting on" Wednesday is a weekly event courtesy of Breaking the Spine that showcases much anticipated upcoming releases.

from Robison Wells' official website (expected October 2012 release):

Benson Fisher escaped from Maxfield Academy's deadly rules and brutal gangs.

Or so he thought.

But now Benson is trapped in a different kind of prison: a town filled with hauntingly familiar faces. People from Maxfield he saw die. Friends he was afraid he had killed.

They are all pawns in the school's twisted experiment, held captive and controlled by an unseen force. As he searches for answers, Benson discovers that Maxfield Academy's plans are more sinister than anything he imagined - and they may be impossible to stop.

I have no idea what to expect from this series, and I mean that in the best possible way. The blurb for Variant only skimmed the surface of the adventures between the pages and I'm looking forward to experiencing the unexpected again with Feedback. A lot of books can do without being part of series, but these are not those books. Also, the cover perfectly highlights where we're starting off. Ah, this one is going to be so much fun!

Note: You can find my review for Variant here.