Socialpunk: Author Interview

Socialpunk author Monica Leonelle answers some highly anticipated questions regarding her new book series Socialpunk and why you and all of your friends should read it. 

Enjoy! 

Please tell us in one sentence only, why we should read your book. 

Socialpunk is fun and face-paced and has a strong female lead but is also a quick read, so you can enjoy it in one or two sittings if you'd like.

What motivated you to start writing?

I started a Gen Y blog in 2007 called Twenty Set. It actually gained quite a bit of steam early on, but eventually I moved away from Gen Y topics. The reason I started that blog, though, is because I couldn't clear my mind! I literally just needed to get things out of my system. So I wrote that blog 4-5 times a week for about six months until my ideas stop churning so quickly. My love for writing as an adult grew out of that experience.

Who is your favorite character in Socialpunk?

I would say Ima, because she changes so much throughout the book. Nahum is based on a guy I had a crush on in 4th grade (right down to the name, even). Nasser is also exciting because he's got such big ideas and he's so damn reckless. He's willing to completely derail his entire hash just to pursue a dream. I'm a bit like him at times, to be honest.

Who are your favorite author's of all time?

All time? CS Lewis. I also love contemporaries like JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and Cassandra Clare.

What is one book everyone should read?

When I was a kid I loved this book called The Girl With the Silver Eyes. Here is the exact cover of the book I had: http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Silver-Eyes-Apple-Paperbacks/dp/0590442481. It's one of my absolute favorite YA novels, and, surprise! Maggie Stiefvater loves that book too. This was the first novel that made me want to write fantasy and science fiction.

Thank you for the interview!

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The Fault in Our Stars is now mine!

My pre-ordered, signed, first edition of John Green's new book The Fault in Our Stars is officially mine! I'm going to probably torment myself and wait to read this when school starts up, but oh my gosh I'm sooooooo excited! 

xoxo

Welcome back, nerd.

 

So for Christmas my mom got me a Kindle Touch, which was exactly what I wanted. As soon as I opened it and figured it out a little bit I started downloading books, so far I have 35 and counting. One of the first books that I downloaded with the gift card my mom gave me (and those things are like gold for a broke college student like myself) was called Flat- Out Love by Jessica Park and I have to say that it was $3.49 well spent. I read it in a coffeehouse, by a window in my house as the sun was setting and it was becoming hard to read, and a time or two when my mom was nagging at me to stop reading.

Since I've been in school I haven't had a lot of time to do some leisure reading, which is normal, but it's okay with me.  This break from school has been slightly relaxing, crazy at best but my family was never anything but.  I was ecstatic when I opened up my Kindle Touch and since I've had it I haven't really put it down. I think it has actually gotten me back into reading and I love that so much. A friend of mine also got one so we are going to start lending to each other and being total nerds, I love it! Though just because I got a Kindle does not in anyway mean that I will stop buying and reading books in print, because if I have cash on me and see a book that I want to read and keep I usually impulsively buy it.

I hope everyone has had a Merry Christmas and that your New Year is merry and bright!

Or...in the words of Neil Gaiman, "“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself". 




(All pictures via Google Images)

The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors- a review

“Love is a scary thing. If not reciprocated, it can turn a person into a monster.”-Michelle Young- Stone

This novel is one of the best coming of age/finding out who you really are stories that I have read in a while, the characters are very well developed and play all of their parts in Becca and Buckley’s lives beautifully. As far as chaotic lives go the trials and tribulations that the two share that bring them together in the end are enough to make even the most hopeless person have a little bit more hope about their own future. “Without hope…without faith…no one survives.” The last line in the book is probably one of my favorite last words to a book that I have ever read, when I picked up this book I didn’t really think that I would be quite as changed as much as I was in the end. The Handbook isn’t entirely just for Lightning Strike Survivors but it’s almost more of a fictional handbook for life. As corny as it may sound but gosh darn it it’s true! So of course I recommend this book and if you've already read it or it's on your bookshelf and you haven't cracked the spine yet, please do it!

Like the characters in the story I too have attempted running away from the chaotic unpredictability that has been my life for roughly the past four or more years, but I think that going through everything I’ve gone through has only made me stronger. Yes I’m a little bit of a walking cliché but I’ve read somewhere that clichés are the glue that holds some of us together when other things won’t. Including loved ones that almost refuse to say the most simple and powerful words known to man. After a while of not hearing that and if it’s heard and it doesn’t seem genuine and sincere then I think that yes it may in fact start to turn a person into a bit of a monster no matter how hard they may try to fight the pull. I know, I’ve been fighting the darkness before it takes over me.

I know I said that I was going to review The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake next but I couldn’t quite get into it so I’m saving it for another time.



xoxo

One Day

One of the things that I love most about summer time besides the feel of the warm sun on my skin and the smell of fresh cut grass is the freedom to read a pile or two of books at a leisurely pace. Since I'm a self proclaimed bookworm summer time is perfect for me to delve into massive amounts of fiction and escape.

For the past two weeks or so I've been reading the book One Day by David Nicholls and I literally just finished it. I made my brother keep on his light an hour past bed time so that I could finish the last Part. This book is/has been made into a movie and I can't wait for that to come out because based on the trailer I think that this movie will definitely be one that I will want to add to my mountain of a DVD collection with in the first 20 minutes of viewing it. Now here's the synopsis of this beautiful story, after that I'll give you guys my review.

"After one day together – July 15th, 1988, their college graduation – Emma Morley (Academy Award nominee Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess ofAcross the Universe) begin a friendship that will last a lifetime. She is a working-class girl of principle and ambition who dreams of making the world a better place. He is a wealthy charmer who dreams that the world will be his playground.

For the next two decades, key moments of their relationship are experienced over several July 15ths in their lives. Together and apart, we see Dex and Em through their friendship and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Somewhere along their journey, these two people realize that what they are searching and hoping for has been there for them all along. As the true meaning of that one day back in 1988 is revealed, they come to terms with the nature of love and life itself."- Taken from the experienceoneday.com

I fell in love with this book before I even read the synopsis on the book cover (sadly yes I tend to be one of those people that judges a book by it's cover) I'm working on it. I dove in almost as soon as I got it and only put it down, unwillingly, when I had to work or go do other mundane things that daily life demands out of us. I'm such a hopeless romantic that I wanted to be Emma and every time I read I escaped into their world and was transported back in time and traveled where ever the characters went, lived their lives and felt like more than just a fly on the wall. It's hard to believe that this story was written by a guy. It's not the type of "romance" novel that is full of smutty sex scenes, snobby women and boorish men. Well it has a boorish guy or two but through out the novel they change radically and sometimes for the better. 

So I think that whether your a guy or a girl you will fall head over heels, ridiculously, in to that deliciously tumultuous state of love. 

*Even the book cover is beautiful! I want to travel and fall in love, and I WILL One Day. 

xoxo

Why Girls Are Weird (a book review)

Warning: Guys this is very much chick lit so you have been warned.

Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon, I can't say enough great things about this book! It was one of those books that took you by the nostrils and pulled you in with full force. So now this is my attempt to review it/not give it all away.

I came acrossed the book when I was at a store called Half-Priced Books (a little piece of heaven on Earth) with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago and normally I like to read the blurbs on the back of the book before I decide if I want it but the cover of this book alone made me just want to pick it up and buy without reading much else besides the tagline-"Sometimes life is stranger than you are." and that alone gives me at least a little hope that I'm not the oddest person out there. But if I am, I'm not complaining either.

The main character is believe it or not, a blogger and a damn good one at that. She reminds me of ChelsTalksSmack in a weird sort of way but I digress. She begins writing at work just to look like she's actually doing something, and before she knows it fan mail is coming in and that's about the time when things start to slightly get out of hand, her ex finds the webpage tells her to take it down after pity fucking her after a family tragedy takes place, and her best friend and family help her navigate her way out of the mess that she accidentally got herself into.

I found this book to be quite relatable and a very well written piece of literature, I hope the other three books that I walked out of the store with are as good as this one was. The author Pamela Ribon actually has a website that she started before she started writing WGAW ( I couldn't find the link to "Squishy" which was her original site) but this is just as good.

Tell me what you guys/girls think about this review type post and I may do more.

xoxo