Showing posts with label Book Survey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Survey. Show all posts

21 December 2013

Amber's 2013 End of Year Survey and Blogging Break

Before I get into this book survey, I wanted to announce that I'm going on a short blogging break over Christmas. It will only last a week, but I'm hoping that it will give me a chance to recharge and read some books without worrying about posting anything on the blog. I didn't take a break at all this year, and posting almost every day for 51 weeks really gets to you, and so I think a break is just want I need. It will also give me the chance to get way ahead with my scheduling, which has been something that I've wanted to do for a while. So, Merry Christmas everyone, and I'll see you closer to the New Year!

20 December 2013

Tatum's 2013 End of Year Survey

This year was pretty good in terms of reading; I read more in 2013 than I have in the past couple of years, mostly because I graduated from university and had more free time. BUT STILL. In the past I've usually had months long reading slumps but this year I pretty much read continuously from January right up until now; I think I doubled my last year's reading count? Whatever, I hope next year will bring more amazing books and the time to read them!

25 August 2013

A to Z Book Survey

Surveys complete me. And so when I saw this A-Z Survey going around on Twitter, I decided that it must be done. I pressured Amber into doing it with me, because I know how much she enjoys surveys, and I know how much I love reading her answers. I didn't know this was a regular thing, created by Jamie over at The Perpetual Page-Turner, until I discussed it with Amber a bit more. Who knows, I may do some of the other surveys that Jamie comes up with too! This is going to be a super long post, since Amber's here too, so prepare yourselves.

28 December 2012

2012 End of Year Book Survey

This is the annual End of Year survey which was created by the very creative Jamie over at The Perpetual Page-turner. I do this survey every year, because I love filling in questions and I love reading other people's answers. If you've done this yourself then feel free to leave your links below! And thanks to Jamie for hosting this again for a third year!

Best in Books 2012
1. Best Book You Read In 2012? 
I had to break this up into genre, because I had quite a few favourites this year!
Paranormal - The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin Along with the sequel, but I can't cheat too much!
Contemporary - Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson I sobbed. So. Hard.
Dystopia - Unwind by Neal Shusterman EEP! I'm so glad I was told to read this.
Apocalyptic - Poison Princess by Kresley Cole AWESOME! This is also kind of paranormal, but shhh.

2. Book You Were Excited About and Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?
Outpost by Ann Aguirre. I thought I would love it because I really liked the first book, Enclave, but unfortunately this was terrible.

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2012?
The Ivy by Lauren Kunze and Rina Onur, and Poison Princess by Kresley Cole. I was expecting The Ivy to be a light read to feed my contemporary craving, but instead I ended up adoring it. And as for Poison Princess, I had never read anything by Kresley Cole before and I ended up loving her writing style. It read like an adult urban fantasy (which I love) but in YA form.
4. Book you recommended to people most in 2012?
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin because it was my first All Time Favourite of the year and it was AMAZING.

5. Best series you discovered in 2012?
Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, and Unwind by Neal Shusterman. Love them both, and their sequels are flawless!

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2012?
Neal Shusterman, Michelle Hodkin, Kresley Cole, and Morgan Matson. All the ones mentioned in my Best Books list, basically! And also Patrick Ness because he is FABULOUS.

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It's not a new genre, but I don't read adult fiction all that much since this blog primarily focusses on Young Adult. Nevertheless, I really liked this one and ended up finishing it in just a few hours.
8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2012?
Variant by Robison Wells, and The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. Variant was sent to me by Daph from Loving Books, and she had told me it was an amazing book... I just didn't realise that I wouldn't be able to stop reading it! Same goes for the Mara Dyer books, but the second was even more thrilling than the first.

9. Book You Read In 2012 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year?
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, and the sequel. I want to reread them both before I read the third book in the trilogy, so that I can look for clues and refresh my memory!

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2012?

11. Most memorable character in 2012?
Mara Dyer! She's been through so much in the books, and she's a complete BAMF.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2012?
Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson. I can't remember the last time I cried so much over a book.
13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2012?
Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson. As above, really. I cried, I laughed, and this book was just able to make me feel so much in the short time I was reading it. Come to think of it, I might give it a reread next year!

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2012 to finally read?
Percy Jackson! I had been meaning to start the series for ages, and I finally got to it in January of 2012. I haven't finished the series yet, but I've read the first three books and loved them. Thanks again, Daph!

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2012?
I'm gonna be really vague with this one, and just say the ending of Second Chance Summer. No spoilers!

16. Shortest and Longest Book You Read In 2012?
Shortest - The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss, which was tiny.
Longest - The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, which was an epic 800 pages.

17. Book That Had A Scene In It That Had You Reeling And Dying To Talk To Somebody About It?
Variant by Robison Wells. WHAT EVEN. I went straight to Twitter to talk to Daph when there was a reveal. Also, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer had a lot of OMGWTF moments, especially the ending. Before I Wake by Rachel Vincent had a couple too!
18. Favorite Relationship From A Book You Read In 2012?
Noah and Mara from the Mara Dyer series. I love them so much! Also, Sydney and Adrian from The Golden Lily, and Gregory and Callie from The Ivy series.

19. Favorite Book You Read in 2012 From An Author You Read Previously
Before I Wake by Rachel Vincent, and Storm Born/Thorn Queen by Richelle Mead. I love both of these authors so much, and was very excited to read new books from them. Before I Wake only came out this year, but the Dark Swan series was released a while ago and it's honestly one of the best adult series I have read. Well, the first two books that I mentioned above are AMAZING, the last two are just great.

20. Best Book You Read That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else?
I don't know if there was one! I mean, I've read books that have been recommended to me, but all of them have been on my to-read list as well. I'm gonna go with Variant by Robison Wells, and the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, because Daph has pushed me to read them!

Looking Ahead
1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2012 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2013?
A Game of Thrones! I need to finish that damn book. As well as the second and third in the series, but let's just focus on the first for now.

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2013?
The Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead, and With All My Soul by Rachel Vincent. The first is the third in a six book series, but the latter is THE FINAL BOOK in one of my all time favourite series! *cries* I'm sure there are lots more... but I'm having a mind blank right now. Oh! The third Mara Dyer, and the third Unwind!

3. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging In 2013?
My three year blogoversary! I've never stuck with a proper hobby for this long before, let alone reach three years! So come October I'm going to be ecstatic because it'll mean that I've been doing this for nearly a third of a decade. Crazy stuff!

23 December 2010

End of 2010 Survey


This wonderful survey was created by Jamie at The Perpetual Page Turner. I've already done a Youtube video on this survey, but thought I would do a blog post as well.

1. Best Book of 2010?
The best book that I read this year was Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. There are several reasons why it was my favourite, which you can read by clicking and reading my review. I think it sums up my thoughts quite nicely. There were a few books that I thought were really great, but Before I Fall was just a notch above the rest.

2. Worst Book of 2010?
This one was fairly easy to choose, because it's not very often that I dislike a book. But one that I really didn't like was Tyger Tyger by Kersten Hamilton. Something about the writing style and the character development just didn't do it for me.

3. Most Disappointing Book of 2010?
The Forest of Hands and Teeth was the most disappointing read for me. I had heard so many amazing things about this book, but I didn't feel that it lived up to the hype surrounding it. Everyone seemed to love the main character Mary, but I really don't understand why. Again, it's probably best if you read my review!

4. Most Surprising (in a good way!) book of 2010?
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. I didn't expect to like love this as much as I did, as I'd heard many mixed things about it. But in the end it turned out to be one of my favourite books of the year. I think Patch was probably the main reason for that.. but still :D

5. Book You Recommended to People the Most in 2010?
This was Before I Fall, because it was my favourite read of the year - how could I not recommend it?

6. Best Series You Discovered in 2010?
The Hunger Games series. I'm so, so happy it was recommended to me! At first, I thought it was a vampire novel for some reason - probably because of the hype around it! - but I was so surprised and I really loved it. I chose this series in particular because it ended this year, and the other series that I read are still going :)

My other choice is The Mortal Intruments series by Cassandra Clare. It was an amazing series, and if it had been a single book then I would have probably picked this for Best Book of 2010. It's an amazing series, very thrilling and exciting, with all-round amazing characters!

7. Favourite New Author/s You discovered in 2010?
Becca Fitzpatrick - author of the Hush, Hush series - and Kiersten White who is the author of Paranormalcy, which is a new YA series launched this year! 

8. Most Hilarious Read of 2010?
I have two choices, again :) The first is Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick because Patch and Nora were both so, so funny. And The Mortal Instruments series was great as well, and Jace had some amazing lines which I absolutely loved. I think that's the reason I love Patch and Jace so much. 

9. Most Thrilling, Unputdownable Book of 2010?
The Maze Runner by James Dashner. The non-stop action was just brilliantly done, and I couldn't put it down!

10. Book You Most Anticipated in 2010?
Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick. This was the only book this year that I actually pre-ordered so it would arrive on its release date! 

11. Favourite Book Cover of 2010?
Again, I have two that I really couldn't choose from. The first is Firelight by Sophie Jordan. And the second is Nightshade by Andrea Cremer. They're both stunning covers, and the main reasons I bought these books were for the covers!

12. Most Memorable Character in 2010?
Patch and Jace, from Hush, Hush and The Mortal Instruments. I loved these two, and the other characters pale in comparison - for me, anyway!

13. Most Beautifully Written Book in 2010?
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. I just couldn't fault it!

14. Book That Had the Greatest Impact on You in 2010?
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. It really made me think about my life, and things that I had done in the past, and also things that happen all the time in high school. It made me realise that the smallest things had the greatest impact on people, and the tiniest thing could really change peoples' lives. 

15. Book You Can't Believe You Waited Until 2010 to Finally Read?
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater; Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick; TMI by Cassandra Clare. 
I can't believe I took so long to discover that YA was a genre all by itself.

22 November 2010

The BBC Reading Survey

I found this survey on Emma's blog and thought it would be an interesting thing to do. Also, a lot of these books  are ones that I want to read, so it's a good way to keep track!


The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.
• Bold those books you've read in their entirety. (19)
• Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. (11)



I have also underlined the books that I personally own. 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen


2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling


5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee


6 The Bible 

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott


12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 


15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis


37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne 

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas.

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton


91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo



All together I've read or partially read 30 of these books! I think that's pretty good!