Obligatory Welcome Post & Reading List for 2019

Hello and welcome to my book blog!

I honestly don't have much of a plan for this blog except as a way to give my thoughts and reviews on the books I'm currently reading. Allow me to give some backstory:

Growing up, I hated reading. It's not that I was bad at it--in fact, I learned to read at a very early age and was in all the advanced reading classes--but I really just didn't enjoy it. There weren't any books that managed to keep my interest for very long, and I found reading to be an overall hassle.

The only books I actually read for fun were the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, the Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, and the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I attempted the Christy Miller series by Robin Jones Gunn, and it was good for the first couple of books, but then I lost interest by the third or fourth installment. I never had any desire to read Harry Potter or anything like that.

In recent years, I began developing a story for a graphic novel I wanted to create. I'm an artist and I wanted to give some of my original characters a strong presence. Unfortunately, graphic novels are exhausting to draw and I really dreaded doing it. But I still wanted to share the story, so I decided it would be best shared in novel form. The only problem with this was that I didn't have much experience reading books, so who was I to attempt to write one?

Since I was determined to share this story I had in my head, I decided I needed to get started on reading as much as I could. I bought a few fantasy books that seemed similar to the story I wanted to tell. I also splurged for some new canon Star Wars books, since I knew I had loved the Thrawn trilogy so much and am a huge fan of Star Wars in general. So far I have absolutely loved the Star Wars books, enjoyed a couple of the fantasy books, and couldn't even finish another fantasy book I had hoped to appreciate.

I decided to make a goal--a pretty ambitious goal for me, considering that I didn't read much before--to read 19 books for 2019. Some may say "that's too many!" and some may laugh, thinking "that's nothing!" but I'm going to go for it!

Here is my list of books to read, in order of discovering them.

1. Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson - Read, did not finish. Review coming.
2. Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes - Started
3. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
4. Bloodline by Claudia Gray - Read, finished. Review coming.
5. Lost Stars by Claudia Gray - Currently reading.
6. Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray
7. Master & Apprentice by Claudia Gray (can you tell I like Claudia Gray lol)
8. A Court of Thorns & Roses by Sarah J. Mass - Started
9. Aftermath Series by Chuck Wendig
10. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
11. Stop Doing That Sh*t by Gary John Bishop
12. Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson
13. Last Shot by Daniel José Older
14. The Hawk & The Dove by Penelope Wilcock
15. How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
16. King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
17. Descendant of the Crane by Joan He
18. White Rose by Kip Wilson
19. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

A few thoughts: I am aware that many of these are YA fiction. Technically I'm not considered a young adult anymore (passed that hill last March), but I've stopped caring about the target age of a book and more about the content within the book. My hope for my personal novel is to appeal to a younger audience anyway, so I'm exploring other authors' writing styles to help with that. Also, I know that some of these books may not be good. Many readers may even hate them for various reasons. Overall, the reviews on Goodreads were positive. Either way, reading them--even if they're bad--will help me learn what I like and dislike.

Anyway, like I said I don't have a solid plan for how this blog will work, how often I'll update, or what the subject matter will be. Who knows? I may only post every few months with a new book review haha. No matter what, I look forward to using this as a way to process my thoughts on the books I've read. I may be a bit late to the game but better late than never!

Talk to you next time,
Zayla