144 books down, 80 days to go!

With less than 3 months to go, Zoe and Elizabeth, two avid readers (and sisters), are up for the challenge of finishing 200 books in one year!
Well, at least, I (Elizabeth) am.  I'll work on Zoe.  ;)
I finished Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess.

Meredith, a 15 year old girl, lives in a condo with her mother.  But her father isn't dead, or even missing.  He's locked up.  With his frightening aura away, Meredith begins to regain the feeling of safety, well, at least until he returns. He might be a baseball coach, but he has abused many girls and boys at Mer's school, including Meredith herself.  Meredith is more terrorized than ever, but her mother is anything but.  She is eager to have Mer's father back, and wants more than anything another child. Meredith and her perolized friend Andy must deal with the nightmare eating them away, having Mer's father around.  this book was intense and chilling, but not explicit.

I also finished The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks.  This is an Australian book, I believe, considering the way it is written.  At first I didn't like this book, it was rather boring, I wasn't really sucked into the story, and I kept thinking I would fall in love with it, but I never did.  In this book permanently 15 year old Nina Harrison is a vampire in the Reformed Vampire Support Group.  But these vampire's aren't like others in stories.  They are just the opposite.  Sickly, sensitive, and feeding from guinea pigs, refusing to drink human blood or create more vampires.  Nina hates her life.  It's boring, risky, it's anything but normal.  But when Casimir is shot and staked, a old-time member of their group, the vampires are forced to move in with Nina's mortal mother. A fterall, the killer could now the whereabouts of all of the vampires in the RVSG, and no vampire hunter would think to look in a mortal's home.  But they can't live that way forever, so Dave (who happens to be in love with Nina) and mortal Father R go on a jurney tracking down American silver Bullet Buyers.  They run across a Werewolf Fighting club, save Rueben, a handsome vamipire, from his sick life, and end up getting into more trouble then they thought they possible could have. I wanted to like this book, but I honestly just did not.


I have to go again (my grandparents are visiting soon, have to help my Mom get ready!) but I did finish a few more books, Hex Hall (totally awesome- should have reviewed that one!), The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez, Plan B, and One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies.


The US has about 9 billion chickens. China has more than 13 billion.

Love, Elizabeth S.

144 books down, 80 days to go!

138 books down, 91 days to go!

Hey Everyone!  Sorry I haven't blogged in so long, MCAS got in the way (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System blah blah) but when you're done with testing you get to read and get this: I have read 8 books since May 9th.  Also, please comment to let us know whether or not plays count as books because I also finished the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Anyway, I read Lucky and Gorgeous which are two books in a series about the Avery sisters.  Lucky is the first book which is about the youngest of the Avery girls, Phoebe, who is smart, rich, popular and 'gorgeous.'  Phoebe is having a middle school graduation party with her popular friends but when Claire Avery loses her job things get bad for Phoebe, who doesn't seem to have a care in the world.  The Averys are going broke in a town full of rich snobs.  But Phoebe is just a naive, spoiled girl.  How is she supposed to feel?  In Gorgeous ninth grade Allison or 'Alison with ONE l' (Long story) is in the same position at the same time, but Allison doesn't seem to be popular or pretty the way Phoebe is.  She tries to understand her family's situation but money doesn't matter much to her.  Her family does, and her friends.  But when new girl Roxie Greene moves to town, a gorgeous model from NYC, Allison must figure out who her real friends are.  Also, she sold her cell phone to the devil so 7/6 people would think she was gorgeous, her crush, Roxie, and a modeling photographer.  Yep, that's right, "interesting-looking" Allison who never really cared much about her looks sneaks into a modeling agency to escort Roxie, but ends up getting photographed and becomes a semi-finalist in a competition.  I loved the second one, though the first book, Lucky, was good too.  Phoebe's a little bit of a brat though.  I like Allison though she is kind of shallow for part of the book.

I also read Girl Overboard.  In this book Syrah Cheng is a 15 year old girl, the daughter of billionaire Ethan Cheng.  Syrah loves skiing and has wanted to go professional but when she gets in a fatal accident things change for the worst.  She is not the perfect girl everyone thinks she is.  Her adult half-siblings hate her, her best-friend's girl friend is ruining her and Age's relationship and she is left alone by her working parents. But when Syrah becomes classmates with a classmate named Lillian who has a sister with cancer, Syrah begins to help Lillian's family with a project to help fight against cancer and Syrah learns about her culture, relationships and even the possibility of death.

Well, I have to go now but here are the other books I read; Dance with a Vampire (the fourth book in the Vampire Kisses Series), Radiant Shadows (the fourth book in the Wicked Lovely Series- Maggie if you are out there these books are must reads- great!), Witch and Wizard, go Ask Alice (inappropriate and intense- not recommended- I read it because someone told me it was a classic, but they never said it would be dirty!) and Sweet Far Thing.  I am now onto the fifth book in the Vampire Kisses Series.  Thanks so much!

138 books down, 91 days to go.

Love, Elizabeth Sweet.

The tentacles of the giant Arctic jellyfish can reach 120 feet (36.6 meters) in length.

130 books down, 101 days to go!

Hi everyone!

I finished, The Pearl, by John Steinbeck and The Reckoning, by Kelley Armstrong. 

The classic tale of The Pearl told the tale of Kino, a poor pearler, who when is baby Coyotito gets stung by a scorpion goes on a journey as he finds The Pearl of The World. This pearl can give him anything he wants, a doctor to cure his child, a white wedding for him and his wife Juana, a rifle, proper clothes, anything he desires. But everything is not as it seems. Soon, the greed of the pearl engulfs Kino as the pearl becomes his soul and the family man is irrevocably changed for the worst. Based on the classic Mexican folk tale, Steinbeck's deep descriptions made this book a good school read, however I would never read it in my own time; it was good for analyzing, but frankly, the plot was boring and the book moved at a snail's pace (and that's an overstatement). 

Though, on the bright side, The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong was FANTASTIC. This book was the final chapter in the Armstrong's trilogy about Chloe Saunders, a necromancer (sees ghosts and can raise dead) and other Supernaturals that have been genetically modified by a sinister group called the Edison Group. in this book, Chloe continues to be on the run from the evil scientists, though things finally come to an end. They don't "stop the group" but end up killing many of them so the group can't come after them anymore. It was a bittersweet finale to the trilogy because as in any real life situation, things aren't ever perfect, mostly far from it. Things at the end of this book are still pretty messed up for the protagonist, but as she is in Derek's (new werewolf bf) arms, things are better for her. There's no more running, no more terror and she's with the unexpected person of her dreams.

130 books down, 101 days to go!

OH AND BTW IM READING ROMEO AND JULIET AND A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM! O:

There are only four words in the common English language that end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardou

128 books down, 101 days to go!

Hey All! My new nook came, I don't have to read paper-backs any more!  I finished three books!  Yay!

The first book I finished is called Harmless by Dana Reinhardt.
 In this book two best friends, Emma and Annie, are in their freshmen year at High School when they meet a new girl named Mariah and be her friends to become more popular.  The girls go to one of Mariah's boyfriends parties one night but tell their parents that they are going to the movies.  Little do they know, their parents show up to check on them at the movies!  But the girls don't want to get in trouble, being so young and going to a wild party, so of course, they lie.  But this isn't an innocent little white lie ("We felt really bad for one of the girls in our grade, she was all alone, so we decided to hang out with her instead.")  No, they said that a man attacked them on the way to the movies.  Not smart.
The parents of Annie and Emma, of course, call the police and have them talk to the girls.  The best friends are too scared to give in now, though.   Everything goes out of control, which they never meant to happen, and are known for defending themselves against the crazy man.  But soon a man, who never did anything to harm Emma and Annie, gets arrested for the crime, they begin to realize just how wrong they've been and just how serious their actions are becoming.

I also read Kiss of Death, the last (?) book in the Morganville Vampires series, by Rachel Caine.  In this book one of the four best friends, Michael, living in the Glass House, who also happens to be a vampire in a vampire-infested town, gets a record deal for being such a fantastic musician at 19 years old.  So Claire, a 17 year old mortal, and her two mortal friends Shane and Eve get permission to go with Michael and another, older, vampire assistant to record Michael's music, and things go horribly wrong, a road trip from Hell.  The five stumble upon another vampire infested town.  Well, not really stumble.  Claire, Shane, and Eve get kid-napped by  vampire breaking out of their hometown, Morganville, and Shane and Eve end up being taken there.  But this town is full of sick vampires and unprotected humans hiding for their lives.  But after a harsh battle things actually settle down, and the book ends the series (?) in the perfect way.

The last book I read is called Runaway by Meg Cabot, the third and last (?) book in the Airhead series.  In this series and evil company, Stark Enterprises, "owns" a model named Nikki Howard, one of the most famous faces on Earth, and when she finds out a huge secret leading to more secrets, which she doesn't know about, they most act.  They kill Nikki Howard's brain.  But they can't their biggest form of profit, so they preform a surgery, which we find out in this book, has been preformed many times in secrecy by the company.  They switch Emerson Watts' (17)  brain into Nikki's body.  Just a smart, nerdy, nobody girl they killed for their own profit.  In this book Em is kid-napped by her "boyfriend" (Brandon threatened her into calling herself that) and son of Stark Enterprise's Robert Stark, along with the real Nikki, who we found out in the last book IS alive in another body that nobody knows about, and Nikki's mother and brother.  But when the four a rescued by Em's real boyfriend and best friend in the world, things go horribly wrong.   Em's relationship with Christopher is falling apart at the same time as she finds herself falling deeper and deeper into the secrets of Stark.  But Christopher the hero and his house arrest 14 year old cousin help Em uncover their biggest secret yet, stockholders buying humans off of Stark so that they can have their brains transplanted into younger bodies with plenty on potential, killing the body's brain in the process. Stark gets busted, surprisingly without killing Em's little sister in the process (Robert Stark threatened to if their secret got out.)  Great book, I LOVE Christopher in this book, and as always I love Em.

The longest game of underwater Monopoly lasted for 45 days!

Love, Elizabeth.

128 books down, 101 days to go!
I'll have Zoe blog, she finished a book also, I think.  Haven't heard much from her lately, have we?!

125 books down, 109 days to go!

Hey All!  I'm really sorry for taking so long to post!  You see, all things electronic hate me, including my nook I guess.  It died.  So today we are bringing it to the store for an exchange.  Or explanation?  "It went pleh."  So anyway, I've been trying to fix the book on my own, but if it makes you disappointed readers and happier, I did finish three paper back between vacation time (when I got NO reading done- thanks to fook... I mean glook... I mean nook!) and this week.  Anyway, this is for A.M.:  I will never admit that you are right about anything with e-readers so ignore that last section please, you know nothing.
I read The View From Saturday for school.  It did have good themes and symbols, but not much really happens, you know?  Nothing to catch my attention.  This book basically teaches you about kindness, being present (hard to explain that one- I'm no English teacher!- not yet anyway...), human connections, and journeys of self discovery.  In this book Ms. Olinski, a teacher coming back after ten years of teaching the sixth grade, now a paraplegic from a car accident is in charge of making her team for something called a Quiz Bowl where four students must come together, for a team, and answer questions to eventually beat the other teams in you school, then your town, state...  And Ms. Olinski chooses, Nadia because she is observant (they all are), Ethan because he is kind and like Nadia, waiting to "come out of his shell", and Noah because he is very intelligent.  Ms. Olinski must choose one more child, which she has no idea how.  Maybe Ham Knapp, who she doesn't know was the one who erased "paraplegic" (which she wrote on the board so the students wouldn't ask questions about her wheel chair) and wrote "cripple," she thinks that was Julian, who she caught at the black board trying to erase cripple before Ms. O sees.  But in the end she chooses Julian when she sees just how awful Hamilton is as a person.  The group are all connected in a web, Nadia and Ethan's grandparents just got married, Noah was the best man at the wedding (long story), and Julian was saved from bullying by Ethan.  They call them selves the Souls, and go on to win the quiz bowl.

I also read Generation Dead by Daniel Waters.  In this book teens who are dying in many different ways are starting to come back to life and become a term called "differently biotic."  Phoebe, the main character and her friends, Adam and Margi, join the club of differently biotics and Phoebe begins to date one named Tommy (even though her best friend Adam would take any bullet for her - read to see what I mean- because he loves her) but what they don't know is that a football player on Adam's team used to have a girlfriend who died and didn't come back (not all teens do) so now he hates "Zombies."  And the football star, Paul, goes insane.  He starts to see Phoebe as if she were Julie, the dead girl.  And now since he hates the Zombies, all because of his girlfriend troubles, he wants to kill all of them, which he tries and in some cases succeeds to.  So when he shoots Phoebe, o tries to at least, things go horribly wrong.

Also read was Breathless by Jessica Warman, which was sorta kinda inappropriate but you do get hooked onto Katie's character, though I like Mazzie, her mysterious, angry, totally lovable roommate the best.  There is drinking and smoking, which i honestly hate reading about, but with I did love the idea of the story.  In this story Katie's brother Will and her suddenly went from poor in the woods to rich in a hell-hole town.   But when Will starts to get teased at a young age, he finds pills and eventually gets drug-induced schizophrenia.  So when he get worse and worse, visiting from his mentally hospitals only over X-mas and summer breaks, Katie's unlikable parents (until the end sort of - the dad smokes and the mom drinks to get the pain away) send her off to an elite boarding school.  Everyone asks her where she comes from and why since almost no students come in your 2nd year of H.S. (except for Mazzie), because most start at the beginning of the 4 years. This book is spread out between all three years of her high school years.  So she can't get rid of the pain and lies, says her brother is dead.  She suddenly is friends with two very popular girls, and has one of the most handsome boys in school as her boyfriend, even though he is super religious and she's well not.  The only way for her to survive the pain of missing her crazy brother is to swim, which she is fantastic at.  Only Mazzie, who comes to be her best friend, knows the truth about Katie's brother.  But things go horribly wrong when Mazzie and Katie go back to visit Katie's parents for the first time.  Will has a freak out, conspiracy's against their parents, and ends up threatening to shoot either himself or his father, who are locked up in Will's bedroom (Will does indeed have a gun.)  So Will gets put away again.  Katie freaks, she thinks she hates Will (who she has loved some much her hole life) and Mazzie is there for her.  She has to keep swimming.  But things get shockingly worse and Will kills someone working at his hospital and gets put in Jail with the mentally insane.  When one of Katie's popular, awful, bratty friends Estella (whose relative worked in court on Will's case) finds out the truth, she tells everyone, and no one seems to care about Katie anymore, not even herself, except for Mazzie and Drew, her boyfriend.  But Katie spirals and when she doesn't get into Yale, which all of her teachers said she was a shoe-in, she goes to Harvard with Drew, even though she broke up with him because A. she cheated on him and B. they have nothing in common beside swimming.  I like the end of this book, a look into Katie's life when she's 10 years older, 28.  I wish Jessica Warman would write this book in Mazzie's prospective, it would be fantastic.  Well, that might just be because I wish she was real I love her character so much!

As of 4/20/10 Lady Gaga's Bad Romance was the number one most viewed video on YouTube with 185,247,313 views (on of 4/20/10). It would take 108,554.3615 years to watch it that many times. 
4/20/10 was my birthday!!

Love, Lizzy S.
125 books down, 109 days to go!