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1st Semester Independent Reading Reflection


As always, the link on the book title leads to Goodreads, and the link on the author's name leads them to their website, blog, Twitter or page about their life.


Related imageThe Lost Hero - Rick Riordan
The Son of Neptune - Rick Riordan
The Mark of Athena - Rick Riordan
The House of Hades - Rick Riordan
The Blood of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
Love and First Sight - Josh Sundquist
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac - Gabrielle Zevin
Paper Valentine - Brenna Yovanoff
Image result for words in deep blue book coverEach Little Bird That Sings - Deborah Wiles
Where Things Come Back - John Corey Whaley
There's Someone Inside Your House - Stephanie Perkins
We All Fall Down - Natalie D. Richards
Out of the Easy - Ruta Sepetys
Dreaming Anastasia - Joy Preble
Coming Up for Air - Miranda Kenneally
Turtles All the Way Down - John Green
Words in Deep Blue - Cath Crowley
North of Happy - Adi Alsaid
Image result for the lake effect book coverEverything is Awful: and Other Observations - Matt Bellassai
Woman Enters Left - Jessica Brockmole
Catch a Falling Star - Kim Culbertson
The Bakersville Dozen - Kristina McBride
Love and Other Foreign Words - Erin McCahan
The Lake Effect - Erin McCahan
All the Good Parts - Loretta Nyhan

What another wonderful year of reading. Second Semester 2017, Summer 2017 and First Semester 2017 have been full of great books and learning experiences with writing. Some of the best books I've read this past year were wonderful surprises, and this goes especially for the books this first semester of junior year.

To start this semester, I finally finished the Heroes of Olympus series, a series I had wanted to finish for a couple of years but never got the opportunity to. I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending of the series, but I was glad to have finished it finally and see how it ended.

This semester, I got to go to this really fun festival called Books by the Banks in downtown Cincinnati. I got to meet some talented authors, like Natalie D. Richards, Erin McCahan, and Jessica Brockmole. All three have books featured on the list above and all their books were pleasures to read. I especially enjoyed Brockmole's historical fiction novel about the adventures of three women set in the 1950s. Other authors that I met at this festival included Kristina McBride and Adi Alsaid.

John Green's new novel, Turtles All the Way Down, was an enjoyable read. It was also clever and smart. I devoured this book because the characters felt real and had normal teenage problems that I related to. I highly recommend this book out of the others from this list.

Another few books worth mentioning are Stephanie Perkins's "There's Someone Inside Your House" and Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See." Perkins's novel, a more thriller-type young adult book, was a twist from her usual romance filled novels. I love all four of them, plus the two compilations she edited, and this is a book I would recommend to anyone who wanted a young adult thriller.

All the Light We Cannot See is pure magic, so much so that I have no words that would describe it accurately. All I can say is it that this is a book I seriously recommend if you're looking for a good book to read.

To wrap this all up, even though I didn't have as much time as I would've liked to read this semester, the books that I did read were all entertaining, unique, and purely a joy. I can't wait for all the books this new year will bring in to store shelves and my own book shelves. Keep reading.
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