February Reading Recap, NYR Update 2/12, and Contest Update

It's March! Daylight Savings, St. Patty's Day, Spring (SPRING!). My New Year's Resolutions are still going strong, and my first ever contest has come to an end. Three, lucky ladies will be getting emails from me shortly, and the Exotic Feline Rescue Center will get a $60 donation. Thank you all so, SO much for following this blog. It's still in its infancy, but I'm grateful to have met you all.

Without further gracious blabbering, here are my February books:

2/4/11 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I really enjoyed this book, first of all. It was terrifying, especially since the audience will be middle grade, but at the same time...how do I put this...kids probably need to read things like this. A gritty, have-and-have-not, be grateful, very political kind of book with a bit of a love story. If you haven't picked this one up, do so. You'll be appalled by the brutality, but thoughtful at the masterpiece that is Katniss Everdeen.

2/6/11 - Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
This is my favorite in the trilogy. Peeta Mellark may have turned me off to bad boys for good (remember this post?). I certainly fell in love with him. More in this book than the first one. There's still quite a bit of bloodshed. One of my favorite characters, Cinna, is assumed to be dead, and I gobbled up every word to see if Peeta would make it. Excellent book!

2/7/11 - Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Yes, yes. I know. I read the book in a day. But you probably did too! This was my least favorite of the three, but I have to imagine that these kinds of ugly things happen in a civil war. I wanted a fight between the potential suitors followed by their confessions of love, but it didn't happen. Gale and Katniss aren't speaking most of the time, and Peeta...I just can't talk about it. It ends the way I hoped, though too quickly and not without a lot more blood and heartbreak, but Collins got the romance right (my opinion). Everyone needs to read these books.

2/15/11 - Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris
I met Carrie at the Antioch Writer's Workshop in 2010, my first foray into the world of writing/authors/conferencing/etc. She was sweet and helpful and honest, so I tried out her Jane Austen-inspired murder mystery about Mr. Darcy and his new wife. We all know the story of Pride and Prejudice, and this picks up immediately after that. The dialogue is enchanting (yes, enchanting) and the pace is slow-to-moderate until the end. It wraps up in a hurry, but it works. Not my normal read, but I enjoyed it.

2/20/11 - Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Loved, loved, loved (and LOVE) this book. Gilbert's voice and the way she weaves her personal tale of divorce, exploration, discovery, and hope (yes, yes HOPE) have rekindled the wannabe traveller in me. I've never been out of the country (excluding U.S. protectorates). Heck, I've only rarely been west of the Mississippi, so I know nothing about travelling, but I want it. I want it so badly I can't stop surfing travel websites. Read this book, whether you're twenty, thirty, forty, or one hundred and twelve, because it needs to be devoured. Thank you so much to Kate Scott for having a contest from which I won this incredible book.

2/26/11 - An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
This was a good one. I liked it a lot better than Looking for Alaska (not that LfA wasn't good, but I'm not a huge fan of heart-crushing, sob stories [my opinion]). The inability of the characters to understand what they're feeling plays out like seventeen/eighteen year old drama. It's real, making me once again wonder if Green is the inspiration for the main character in his book. Laugh-out-loud funny in some parts and painful in others, I'm glad it was recommended (and loaned) to me.

Plans for March:

I'll be conservative in my plan and hope to surprise myself. On the Kindle: The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, The Room by Emma Donoghue, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. In addition, there's a book called The Overnight Socialite on my desk that I bought ages ago and need to read, so that will be four.

What March reading plans do you have? How about plans for Spring? Do you clean? Do you break, as in Spring Break? Are you going to Seattle/Forks (yay! me too!)?

-Marie