The Battle of the Labyrinth (#4 Percy Jackson & The Olympians) by Rick Riordan

The Battle of the Labyrinth (#4 Percy Jackson & the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

Woah. Okay, just let me pause for a minute to gather my thoughts.

I can't believe this series is only five books long! I feel like there are just so many more adventures to be had. But I guess that's what the Heroes of Olympus series is for. Percy when he's older, right? I'm so looking forward to getting my hands on those books.
Anyway back to this book - it was all the fun and danger and action and heroic adventurous epic-ness that you would expect from Rick Riordan. I just love this story so much. Or rather, this whole series.

The Titan's Curse (#3 Percy Jackson & the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

The Titan's Curse (Book #3, Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

Wheeeheeheeeeee!
I am seriously loving this series. So much so, I'm going to start reading Book 4 as soon as I'm done writing this post. And I never read sequels consecutively, even when I have them on my shelf ready to be read!

The characters are awesome, as usual. We get to know Thalia a lot better in this story, and we also get introduced to some other really great characters too, like Artemis, Apollo, Zoe the Huntress, and a couple of new half-bloods, Bianca and Nico. Clarisse isn't really present in much of this book but that's alright because no one really likes her that much. Hehe.

2013 End of Year Survey

My End of Year Book Survey 

I haven't done one of these before, but it looks like fun, so here we go!

This is hosted by Jamie over at her blog, so click here to get more info, link your own post, etc!

My survey will be a tad different; I'll just pick out a few questions from the many original questions to answer. 

1) The best book I read in 2013?

I have to pick two! I'm sorry!

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. 

Books don't just win Newbery Medals for no reason! Here's a full post on what I thought about this book.

It was beautiful. Charming. Funny. Magical.

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella.

Probably one of my favourite Sophie Kinsella novels, if not my very tippy top favourite. 

Hilarious fun with deliciously exciting characters, flapper dresses and Charleston dancing.

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

I had a lot of fun writing Goodreads status updates for this one as I read through it. 

You can see them here.

This was a rather intense one. I know it's called The Husband's Secret so I should have expected some mystery and twists, but there's some heavy stuff that these characters deal with! For example: grief, guilt, betrayal, the blurred line between right and wrong, and murder. There were also lots of secrets and tragedies.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.

I've just been sitting two metres away from my laptop just now, on the couch, reading the last pages of this book. Now I'm here. This little 'my thoughts on...' post will be a tad different, I'll be writing (and rating) in a more segmented fashion. Hope you don't mind. I'll give a rating out of 5 for each category and then at the end we'll see what the average turns out to be! But FYI, the rating I've given this novel on Goodreads is 4 stars. :)

Book Haul! {feat. Gaiman, Riordan, Lewis}

It's a whole lot of Middle Grade reads in my book haul today!

story time | wineskin in the smoke {original}

This past semester I took the 2nd year creative writing unit (last year I took the 1st year one; technically I'm a 3rd year but they weren't offering the 3rd year creative writing unit this sem) and I had a wonderful 3 hour writing workshop every week on Wednesday at 9am. I had a really great group of people in my workshop and although we had 30 in a class ideally meant for like, 12, I still took some good stuff out of it. 

I could ramble on about my creative writing class until kingdom come, but that's either a post for another time or a post that I should never publish for your own sake lest I bore you to the brink of death. I'll probably write it up and post it either way. Tough luck for ye who click on THAT.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

QUICK UPDATE WITH MOI: Sorry I've been a little AWOL these past several weeks. It was the worst month of the year! Not just because the seasons have changed and I've been sneezing and getting bitten by bugs like a maniac, but because I've had soo many assignments and an exam and we're just about ready to call it the end of my tertiary studies! But now all I have left is my practicum placement unit (interning at Westerly Magazine), so I'll have plenty more time for reading and reviewing and videos and hauls et cetera! 

~~~~~~~

STARDUST by NEIL GAIMAN

(a different sort of review. as usual, spoilers may lurk. beware: my thoughts are laconic tonight.)