Hey book bloggians! Today I decided to
talk about some of my favorite books that I read while I was in High School. π
These books are just books I read for fun while I happened to be in high
school, none of them were required reads for homework…except kind of the first four, but I’ll explain
that in a second.
Now, it has only been a year since I
graduated, but I really wanted to talk about some books I really enjoyed during
that time and couldn’t talk about before because I hadn’t had this blog yet! So
without further ado…
These first four books hold special
significance to me because they were the books I read in my senior year as a
part of something called Battle of the Books, affectionately known as: BOB.π
BOB is a program that my school
district had that basically, was like
a competitive book club. I know,
sounds awesome right? IT WAS.ππ
It was for Kindergarten all the way
through 12th grade, and how it worked was your school would have
teams for each age group with their own set of books to read, (lower
elementary, upper elementary, middle school, and high school) and you would
have meetings about once a week (or whatever worked best for your team) and your
team would practice answering trivia questions in the style that they would be
in competition. The questions were very
specific. Some would be easier and pretty obvious, but most would be pretty
vague. An example of a question they would have would be something like this:
In which book was there a “Tiffany blue lamp set on a small wood beside table
given to the character by her grandmother” or something like that. They would
always be written how the exact sentence was described in the book, so it
teaches you to remember specific details. Also it taught me to remember which
authors wrote what books, because in competition you had to have one person be
the “writer” (that was me) and another person be the “speaker.”
The judge would
go around to each table and the “speaker” had to stand up and say the answer to
the question with the title of the book and either the author’s last name or
full name. The “writer” had to write out the answer the same way on a piece of
paper for the “runner” to put in the box at the judges table at the front of
the room. You had to be sure you had the right author for the right book and
that you spelled it correctly and that the “speaker” and the “writer’s” answers
matched, or else you would only get partial points for missing any of these.
Oh, and did I mention that once the question was asked, you had only one minute to discuss it with your
teammates, agree on an answer, have the “writer” write the answer down, and have the “runner” run up to the
front of the room? Yeah, it can get pretty competitive and stressful, especially
if two members are 100% sure of two different answers. πBasically the
entire competition is one big long panic attack. But it’s all about books, it’s
awesome, and it’s REALLY fun, so I didn’t mind. It was actually the only panic
attack I enjoyed having. π
I’d always wanted to join BOB when I
was younger, but for some strange reason, I had it in my head that I had to
read the entire list of twelve or so
books for your age group by myself
before even thinking about joining a team. I could never finish it, so I always
missed out. Apparently that wasn’t true at all and I didn’t actually get to be
a part of it until my last year of school. π© Anyway, I overheard
some girls my age talking about BOB and how they were planning to break up the
list of books among them so they could cover the whole list between them so
that if at least only one person read a particular book, they would at least have
a chance of knowing the answer to the questions related to that book. Of
course, the goal is to get as many people as you can to read as many of the
books you can, so you have a better chance at winning. That made so much more sense to me, so I signed up
even though I was worried I wouldn’t be able to commit because of homework, projects,
other books I wanted to read and graduation coming up and all of that. But, it
was one of the best decisions I ever
made because I made some amazing friends to laugh, talk and fangirl over books
with. In the competition the top three teams with the most points were able to
advance to compete in the state-wide competition, but at our district-wide
competition, (which was the lowest level) we only placed 7th, so I was
disappointed that it was already over since I only got to do it one year, but I’m
so glad I did it because I wouldn’t have made the first group of friends that I
hadn’t known my whole life that I felt like I could completely be myself
around, and I wouldn’t have read these amazing books at just the perfect time
in my life. So on that note:
*Cover images belong to Goodreads
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed
this book. It’s a Tim Burton-esque retelling of The Wizard of Oz, where a girl
from modern-day Kansas is swept up in a tornado and taken to Oz, only to
discover that it is not all singing and rainbows like in the movie. Dorothy had
come back to Oz as an adult and taken over, basically becoming and evil
dictator and the Amy, the other girl
from Kansas has to team up with the Wicked Witches (who are apparently good
now?) to take down the evil Dorothy. It’s creepy, but it wasn’t too creepy for
me. I loved the creativity of taking OZ and completely switching everyone’s
roles and I think Danielle Paige did a really good job of coming up with a
completely new story than the original and the world building was awesome! I
can’t wait to start the sequel soon!
Okay, I know I’ve talked about this
book before BUT I WILL TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN UNTIL I FIND A NEW FAVORITE! This is
honestly one of the most AMAZING books I’ve ever read! It’s technically a
dystopian, but it’s mostly sci-fi I think cuz it’s all about supervillains and
regular people being the heroes instead and AWESOME POWERS and TECHNOLOGY and
sassy funny characters and stupid metaphors and bad puns and an AWESOME plot
and WORLD BUILDING and OMG PLEASE READ IT IT’S BEEN OVER A YEAR SINCE I’VE READ
IT AND I’M STILL REELING FROM THE PLOT TWIST AND I HAVE NO ONE TO TALK ABOUT IT
WITH HEEELLLLP!!! π«

Here is the link to my Goodreads review
of Steelheart if you want to check it out:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1456230147?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
This book scared me. Maybe it was because the trailer for the movie San
Andreas was playing everywhere while I was reading it, and I had to go on a
trip to California soon after I finished reading this so I was pretty paranoid,
but this book is about a teenage guy who has a summer job on a cruise ship, and
on the way to Hawaii, “The Big One” (earthquake) that everyone talks about
finally hits California and completely destroys the West Coast, setting off a
gigantic tsunami that rips apart the ship he’s on, and suddenly it’s this
insane survival story and then there’s this whole subplot of this mysterious
pandemic that’s spreading across the country, and just a whole bunch of crazy! But in a really good way! It’s
really mind boggling to me because this book completely switches genres THREE
TIMES in the middle of it which I thought was really cool! It starts off as a
fluffy teen contemporary, then all of a sudden it’s this action/survival story,
then towards the end of the book and going into the sequel it has these like,
almost dystopian vibes. Which is
crazy to think about because it’s not set in the distant future, this like, just happened and the whole book is SO
DIFFERENT from how it starts to how it ends and you’re just sitting there like,
HOW? WHAT? WHY? WHEN? WHA???? WHAT THE HECK
JUST HAPPENED???!!!!
So yeah, if you are into really crazy suspenseful action
packed books, I definitely recommend it. It’s also only a duology as far as
I know, so it’ll be really easy to get through. Which I’m glad for because if
it was a whole series I don’t think I’d be able to handle it. I have the sequel
and I’m planning on reading it, but maybe I’ll read it next year because I think I still
need to recover from the secondhand PTSD this book gave me. π (Also
other books on my TBR are glaring at me so there’s that)π³
I really wasn’t sure about this book,
but my school librarian and my friends on my BOB team really loved it, so I
picked it up to help rack up points for our team and I loved it! It’s a
Christian murder mystery romance which is awesome
because I don’t think it’s very often that those genres coincide. π
Plus it’s set in ALASKA so, BONUS!!!π This book was so surprisingly suspenseful
and the romance wasn’t overbearing at all! I definitely ship all the different
relationships in this book. Anyway, it’s about a young woman who had a bad
reputation as a teen and as soon as she graduated high school she moved to
Oregon to live with her Aunt and escape her past. Well, in the beginning of the
book, her Aunt, who had moved back to Alaska years before, mysteriously died,
and her niece who stayed in Oregon had to come back to Alaska for her funeral.
When she discovers her Aunt was murdered, the police need her expertise to help
solve the case, and she ends up having to work alongside her ex-boyfriend,
which is kind of awkward, since she’s the one who broke his heart. This was such a great book, the mystery was
really fun to read, the romance actually wasn’t annoying, (probably because this
wasn’t YA?) there are cool deep sea cave diving scenes, and the cover is gorgeous!
You should definitely give it a chance!
This is a touching middle grade novel
about an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s learning to process the tragedy
of losing her brother in a school shooting. It’s very emotional and truthful
and I don’t have Asperger’s but I really found myself relating to the main
character, Caitlin. I gave it five stars and I really think everyone should
read it.
This was the last book in the Gallagher
Girls series and It’s when they are graduating and I read this in my first
semester of my senior year when I was about to graduate and OMG Liz’s
valedictorian speech at the end made me CRY I was so not ready for this series
to end. It’s almost been TWO YEARS since I read it and I STILL have not fully
recovered from my book hangover!
A friend recommended this book to me
and I ended up loving it! It’s a fun
contemporary about what happens when everyone in a high school homeroom class develops
telepathy from an accidentally contaminated batch of flu shots. It’s hilarious
and I loved all the characters and I was planning to read the sequel, but my
friend who recommended this to me said she didn’t like the second book as much
as the first and that it was very different, so I’m a little apprehensive now,
but I think I still will read it eventually.π
My Goodreads review:
Sorry for the GIGANTIC post! I tried to
make the descriptions of the books themselves brief, but explaining BOB took
longer than I thought so...
But I hope you enjoyed it anyway!
What are your favorite books you read
in high school? What books are you enjoying now? Have you read Steelheart?
(Please say yes, I need a book buddy!)
All credit goes to the authors of the images.
Freepik:
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Ohh that BOB sounds really fun! I love competitive things honestly and I wish I'd had something to join in like that when I was in school.π Also I LOVED Dorothy Must Die and Steelheart too! Both were really quite unique and original for their genres?!? Which was super lovely. <3
ReplyDeleteYes!!!! :D I'm so glad you read Steelheart It's one of my favorite books EVER!
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