“New year, New me.” We hear this every year for about 79% of the human population. How many times do you think that It actually follows through. Just because it’s a new year, doesn’t mean that you need to change yourself around completely. There is a lot you can do to change you habits like, Dieting, Reading more, writing more. Whatever you want to change, do it. You shouldn’t feel like you need to change around your whole life just because the calendar starts over. 

In  honor of the new year, I have made some resolutions. They aren’t very out there or anything but they are resolutions that I plan to stick too. Some of them are small and some are bigger but they are all things that I have wanted for a while and I intend to do. 

  1. 1.Read more- Now I know that you probably think that I read a ton already but last year was the first year that I actually started reading. I started reading in about march so I would love to be able to read this entire year without any breaks or anything to distract me in between. I will count all of the books I read this year just so I feel like I have some goal in doing this. 
  2. 2.Get my Grades up- I know I say this every year but this time, I actually think I’m going to do it. Maybe.
  3. 3.Watch less TV- Last  year I probably watched a total of 10 TV series, and it gets exhausting. I don't even like watching TV because most of the time, the characters just annoy me. The only show that I think I can even allow myself to tolerate anymore is Grey's Anatomy
  4. 4.fall in love somewhere that I have never been- I don't mean like a different country or state but I mean a very distinct place. Like a park down the street from my house that I have never been or a new bookshop that I discover that has been embedded in the crevasse of stores that could care less about its existance.
Those are all the resolutions that I have made so far. They are simple and I should be able to accomplish all of them If I really want too. 




I hope this year that everyone tries to become the best version of themselves that they can be. Don’t try to become a “New Me” like everyone says they will. Just try to become an “Improved me”. I hope everyones year is spectacular and full of love and happiness and macaroni and cheese and new boy bands to fall in love with. I hope everyone goes to lots of fun Concerts and meets many fun people. I hope that everyone falls in love with a new place and everyone eats lots of chocolate even if you resolution was to not eat any sugar. I hope that everyone reads pleanty of books and sometimes Fanfiction. It is okay to break resolutions every once in a while, because that is the thing about resolutions. They happen every year. There is always another year to start over again. 

 
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I’m weird, I don’t like reading about people fighting each other to the death, or people who can turn other people into animals or anything weird like that. I guess I’m not a normal teenager because of this. 

This generations favorite genre is probably somewhere between sci-fi and mystery or something. And, I can’t stand either of those things. The only book series that I have read and enjoyed that has to do with one of these genres was the Divergent series. But, that may just be because I know who is playing that characters in the movies and I love them all so dearly. c

My Favorite genre is contemporary. Almost all of the reviews that I have done are about contemporary books. They are just more realistic to me and I don’t find them boring at all. This genre makes them so much more believable which makes me honestly, so much more emotional. I have cried because of a decent number of books before. Like, The Fault In Our Stars

Looking For Alaska

Perks Of Being A Wallflower

The infinite Moment Of Us

Thirteen Reasons Why

Before I Fall


And those are just the most popular that I figure most of you reading this would know. But if you throw in some weird sci-fi I honestly, just find it boring.  It is hard for me to connect to something that seems so distant from what is really there. I have never read Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. I have read The Hunger Games because I felt that it was just a given and everyone should read that series and I read them when I was in like sixth grade.

I am not trying to contradict anybody's opinion or trying to set anybody on a new path of believing but I  just can’t believe that the top genre for 2013 was sci-fi. Even my sister makes fun of me because she says that the book I read are ‘Boring’ and ‘all the same’. And It is true sometimes. A lot of these books are the same, A lot of them begin, and end exactly the same with just a little bit of diversity in between but that is probably what keeps me hanging on.

The book that I am reading right now is confusing me the most because I cant tell if its sci-fi Or if its contemporary. The cover screams sci-fi and so does the blurb on the inside but, the content is different. I got recommended this book by a you tuber that probably doesn’t even know that I exist but I trusted her opinion and bout it. The book Is Premeditated by Josin L. Mcquien.




All I am trying to say in this post is, just because one genre is most popular, doesn’t mean everyone should have to love it. Be diverse and love what you read. The reason that I didn’t read until just last year, was because I didn’t think that there was anything good out there to read. I thought everything was the same and about slaying dragons and living in an alternate universe but, it’s not. If you love sci-fi then by all means, read it. If you love romance novels, then read 89 of them. Just, don’t let people tell you what you can and cannot read because that is one of the things that I love about reading so much. You can become the person that you always wished you could be just by opening up a book and looking at some words  on a page. It’s truly a beautiful thing and I wish everyone would hear that. 


 
This book, this book, this book. wow. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. If you haven’t herd of or read this book, then first of all, I don’t know where you have been this past year, and second of all, you should read it. Of course, it’s by John Green so it has to be good. This is also one of the most quotable and memorable books that I have ever read. I will put some of the quotes at the end of this post because they are so amazing. 




The Fault In Our Stars is about 2 cancer patients, Hazel Grace, And Augustus (Or Gus) Waters. You can probably already tell that this book is probably very sad because it has to do with two sick cancer patients, but that is right, it is extremely sad. There is a love story as anybody may have guessed by John Green. They do stupid things together like smoke without lighting the cigarette, selling childhood swing sets, and going to Amsterdam to meet their favorite author who the both admire so much. This is one of the most memorable books that I have ever read, it is written so incredibly beautifully and you can tell how much time was spent into this masterpiece. I have gotten almost my whole family and friends into reading this book. I got both my grandmas, my mom, my sister, and my best friend all to read it. 




The movie for The Fault In Our Stars is coming out on june 6th 2014 and the trailer comes out on valentines day, which I am looking forward too. Rumor has it that John Green is playing a major role in the movie, I think that he will be playing the author that they both love because in one of his videos on his vlogbrother channel, he said that he won’d be doing much acting, I think that they video was a Q&A with Ansel Elgort who is playing agustus. Ansel is also playing Caleb in divergent. 




I feel like I keep going on and on about how incredibly beautiful this book is and I apologize. (But not really because it is really incredibly beautiful) It is not only about the writing and the words spilled on the page, but it is the way that he has made this book so easy to connect too. I get very emotionally attached to books to the point where sometimes I wish I didn’t, but this one is where i had it the worst. I have read it 3 time and each time I can read it under 3 hours because you literally just can’t put it down, for real. I have nothing but good things to say about this book except for that fact that it is extremely sad and I was probably crying for at least an hour after I finished it, but it is worth the tears. 







“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” -John Green




“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” -John Green




“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” -John Green



 

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I just finished reading Go Ask Alice by Anonymous, it was so amazingly amazing. I was recommended to this book by my brother who is 23 so I was kind of shocked when he asked me to read a book that was mainly directed to being targeted for teenage girls. It is a short book, about 200 pages but it was probably one of the best things that I have ever read which is why I felt to make a blog post about it. 


Go Ask Alice is a journal type book that consists of an abundance of diary entries. I am always drawn to books like this because they give you a chance to emotionally connect with the person who is writing them. Other books like this that I have loved are The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Carrie Diaries. This one seemed to be different though because there was no real plot to the book, everything just sort of happened and the author just expects you to understand. At times I had to stop and actually think about what I had just read because It moves pretty quickly but in the end, it is worth the confusion. 

Go Ask Alice is about a girl, who’s name I don’t think is ever mentioned, Who is growing up just like anybody else and then she starts to get involved with drugs and other things that make her go spiraling down. She runs away from home and meets new people that help her and some that do just the opposite. It is written so realistically that the reader may think that maybe the author is the person who really experienced this. This book is honestly, heartbreaking. I was crying during probably like 50% of this book and most of the time, I didn’t even have a reason too. The entire thing is so beautifully written and I know I already said this but I was just obsessed with the writing in this book and I really wish that it would tell us who the author was. 

There is another book who I believe is by the same person and it is called Letting Ana Go. I have it sitting on my bookshelf right now and I intend to read it but, I went a little overboard on my book shopping over the holidays and now I have about 10 books in line in front of it. Form the back, I can tell that it is pretty much just like Go Ask Alice except instead of addiction, it is about a girl who has an eating disorder and it follows her though that life. I really hope that It is just as good as Go Ask Alice although it might be kind of hard to beat. 

Overall, this book was absolutely incredible and I am so glad that my brother recommended this to me in the first place. And now, I am recommending this to anybody who is reading this. 


 
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Probably one of my favorite series off all time is the Divergent Series by Veronica Roth, there are three books in the series, there is Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. I will be reviewing the first book in the series. In my opinion these books started out really good and progressively got worse. 


Divergent is about a girl named Beatrice who has to take a test to figure out what faction she will be in. Then Tori, the girl giving her the test, tells her that she is divergent and that she must not tell anybody because they will find out about her and apparently you aren’t supposed to know about the divergent people because they have genetically pure genes. (which you find out in the third book) Being divergent, Beatrice has to pick what faction she wants to take part in so she chooses Dauntless, dauntless are the brave, the jump off trains, learn to shoot guns, and fight each other. This is new for Beatrice, she changes her name to Tris, and tries to start over. She is Abgnation born, which are the selfless, the barley even look in the mirror.

Of course I wouldn’t like this book if it weren’t for a cheesy love story so yes, there is one. Tris falls for one of the dauntless trainers, who goes by the nickname of four. He got this nickname because he only has four fears. During the stimulations they put you through obstacles where you have to face all of your fears head on, it is very rare to have four fears because most of the people have 11 or 12, Tris only has 7. 

Well basically, Tris falls in love with four and he knows that he is divergent but he doesn’t tell anyone, he tells her that he is divergent too and that they have to stick together. This book honestly confused me to the point where I didn’t even want to read it anymore. Almost ever chapter there was something new that happened that you would have to remember because it would keep coming up again the further chapters and I asked my sister about 700 times what was going on because she had read the books before me. 

Roth used the phrase ‘I grit my teeth’ probably a total of 15 times in the story, I don’t know if she did it intentionally or if it just was a matter of unknowing but I noticed. It didn’t bother me until about the 5th time I herd it and then I started keeping count. I’m not sure what that fact has to do with this book review but It is just something that I noticed. 

Overall, I really recommend this series to anybody who has not read it yet, they are coming out with the first movie in march and I actually think it will be quite good because according to the trailer, the girl who is playing Tris is the main character in the secret life, which if you read my about me tab, you all know I am obsessed with. She is also going to be playing Hazel in the faults in our stars and she plays Amy in the spectacular now!  

This book defiantly was addicting, I read all three books in one week. All three of the books were very hard to put down, especially the first one just because it was setting the foundation for the other two and I found it to be so incredibly interesting. The last one was a bit slow and not to mention, THE SADDEST THING THAT I HAVE EVER READ. The whole book is incredibly boring until about the last 10 pages where everything bad happens. But, aside from this tragic ending, it is a very good series. 




 
So I came across my friend Rachel's blog post this morning..........

Rachel's blog post
My friend, Rachel, Contrived a blog post recently about her opinion on the teenage Cliché’s. For the most part, I couldn’t agree more with most of the content of this post but there were a few things that made me want to go to her house and steal all her books. The first one was the most painfully obvious thing that she knew would get me unhinged, John Green. 

It is clearly obvious that I am an Immeasurable fan of John Green, and not only his books, but just his persona just in the greatest extent. She said that all of his books were similar in the sense that they all have to do with a boy and a girl falling in love, and that just being the end of the story. Well, It’s not all entirely true and that is what I am trying to get at. 

All of his books are diverse in the sense that they tell a different story, they all have a main character that is just some nobody from Alabama or Florida, generally. There is alway a girl involved except for Will Grayson, Will Grayson because it happened that It was a boy involved but, it was still the same plot. 

Now that someone reads this I sort of feel like I am contradicting myself, but Im trying not to, I promise. This sounded a whole lot better before I started to actually write it out, in my head. What I am trying to say is that, his books are all different in their own way. He is an incredibly beautiful writer and that is saying a lot because I happen to find a lot of writing beautiful. He has this thing that he incorporates into every story that just makes you emotionally connect with all of the characters. And yes they are all similar. I would love it if all of his characters just came to life and had to have lunch together, It would probably be incredibly boring, considering how similar they all are but It would be something to see. 

John Green has something incredible to offer in every single one of his books and they all have a different effect on everybody who reads them. The small details that he adds. Like Pudge’s love for last words or the small quotes that he adds that you see all over, that people have adopted into their lives and reconsidered they’re entire life and being. At least, that’s how it was for me. 




Rachel’s post also talked about the classic love triangle. I love, love, love, love triangles. They almost all end up the same, like she said. With Bella ending up with Edward, or Katness ending up with Peeta. But, that is just the way that they are. They also end up with the under dog, or the person that stole them away in the first place, They end up with the person whom the perspective or the story was told from. (Except for the Great Gatsby but, that is a whole other topic that I could go on for hours about). I disagree because, I don’ t think that I would consider a love triangle to necessarily be cliche. If they were so cliche and out dated then how come The Hunger Games and the Twilight Saga were even made into movies. Because, everyone likes love triangles. 




Anyways, I agree with everything else Rachel said in the post. Except these two things just, no, no. (especially the one where she called out John Green).

These are just some reasons why teenage cliche’s are not all that cliche.



 
I'm blogging on my phone. what is happening. this is revolutionary


 

Hello everyone, I told all of you recently that I would be reviewing my favorite book  Looking For Alaska  by the wonderfully, amazing, John Green. Now I have always been a fan of John Green, not only his writing, but his youtube channel, "Vlogbrothers". I have been a nerdfighter since, well, forever. The first time I read Looking for Alaska I knew what I was in for, All over tumblr all you ever hear about is this book and the journey it takes you on and all that crap. I didn't think much of it when I first bought it. I bought it at a little bookshop in Santa Barbara that I still love so dearly to this day. 

To say the least, I have read this book almost 4 million times. Not actually, but you get my point. I have read all 221 fascinating pages of this book at least 8 times, I have annotated it front to back with at least 3 annotations on each page. 

What this book is about is a boy named Miles, or Pudge if you want to get fancy. Anyways he basically has no life until he goes off to boarding school where he meets that wonderfully fascination Alaska Young. Now i'm going to be honest when I first saw the title of this book, I thought they were reffering to Alaska the state so I was a little taken off guard when I found out that Alaska was actually the name of a fairly beautiful girl down the hall. Pudge has a fascination for last words which I so kindly admire because I do as well, not I don't know every single persons last words but I find it quite interesting when I here some. My favorite from the book are "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth" -Simon Bolivar. Which then follows up with the theme of the story "The only way out of this labyrinth of suffering is to forgive" now this quote will always be my favorite quote of all time, no matter how many books I read I will only always remember this one, I also have done various art projects which are based around this quote. I am getting off track but yes that  quote is super fab. 

An Idea that is brought up pretty early on in this book is the idea of a great perhaps. Now I'm not sure why, but this is the aspect of the book that felt to have drawn me closer and closer to the text. It is something that I have always had in the back of my mind but I never found the words to articulate it. When I first read this book it took me a while to fall in love with all the quotes reguarding the great perhaps but now I see why I did. The idea the Pudge has about the great perhaps is that There is one amazing event that someone should do in their life and that should be their reason to be here, he is hoping that not only him but Alaska will also seek this great perhaps. The last words that inspired this idea were from Francois Rabelias "I go to seek a Great Perhaps" 

Well to say the least. Pudge falls hard for Alaska, They spend lots of time together but she is sort of a nut which I kind of admire. She is depressed but lets face it, who isn't. Well here is when the "SPOILER" power kicks in. Alaska dies. She gets in a car accident and a big part of the book is the unknown, did she die by natural causes or did she kill herself. I really wish that there was some sort of unwinding the string at the end of the story to tell us what really happened with Alaska. Not even Miles knows, which probably killed me the most, (no pun intended). Now I did a lot of research on this book when I finished it because I was letting my curiousity get the best of me, but John Green said that this book was strictly based off of events in his life. Now i'm sure that he did not loose his first love to a tragedy but what I do know is that he went to boarding school and fell in love, all the places in the book, regarding the smoking hole, and the swing where Miles and Alaska have their first conversation, actually are true places. This book ended up having a pretty emotional tool on me because of my love for John Green as it is, but anybody who has read this book should know what i'm talking about. (You shouldn't even be this far down on the post if you haven't read it yet because it was clearly marked, "SPOILER". ) Thanks for reading:) I hope that you all enjoyed Looking for Alaska just as much as I did

 
I Don't think that I was very straight froward as to  explaining what I am doing for this blog.  Well here's the plan. I will blog mainly about books and book reviews. I have a tendency to spoil almost every event in  a story.  I will most likely title each section for "Spoilers" and a section for "non-spoilers" . It is pretty straight froward as to what that means, but just in case you can't put two and two together as well as the rest of us, I will explain. 

I will be reviewing a few books a week and maybe more if my mood changes but for the most part, probably 4 books a week. the title that will be marked "Spoilers" I will Talk about a book and you (The reader) will h have the intention that I will most likely spoil the end, talk about major events in a story, and talk about things that I didn't like in a story.

The "Non-spoilers" title I will be reviewing books that I have read but I will be reviewing it for the people that have not read the book themselves.  This section will be if you are thinking about reading a book you can hear my honest opinion about it, without knowing the turn-up of the plot or how many of the main characters die. 

I will probably start reviewing book with in the next week because I have to decide which ones I even want to review. I will mention my favorite books so you guys can get an understanding for what I like to read, basically I range from fiction to Sci-fi. That's really all I read but every book is a little different. Thanks for reading:)


 
   I guess that today marks the first official day of my blog! I'm not exactly sure how im suppossed to feel about this yet, but so far from what I can tell from these first few sentences, everything is going great! I explained very little about what I plan to do with this blog in my "About me" link.

    I plan on telling you all about various books that I am currently obsessed with, and probably other random updates about my life. My life isn't all that exiting, I go to school and the come home, do my homework and read. Try to keep up because I know that my eventful life can be very confusing. OH! I forgot to add this. 

    This blog is a project that Is for my creative writing class. My friend Rachel and I both decidied to do blogs based off of books so her link will be in this post if you are curious. Or maybe the next post, because im not usually very consistant with that, neither is Rachel.
I am going to make rules for myself so I don't screw up although, I probably will 
1. Post something every day
2. Try not to spoil every single book in the world
3. don't feel bad if your blog sucks because you just wrote a lot of random stuff in 1 week
4. Don't make all posts about books
5. Eat a lot of macaroni and cheese.

    
    For the next week I will be posting daily about my favorite books and giving my true opinion, not all will be my favorites. Actually all but one will be my favorite because I only truthfully have one favorite book, that will be my first post tomorrow. "Looking For Alaska" by John Green. I know that you are probably getting annoyed thinkng that I am like every other teenage girl expressing my love for John Green. But, you know what I DON'T CARE HE IS A GREAT HUMAN BEING. I will explain more about it tomorrow but for now I will just leave you with that. Thankyou for reading this first post, I realize that it was very unplanned and random but I didn't exactly have anything in mind for it anyways. Thanks for reading!

    Author

    I'm Ashlynn.  I like reading, writing, and macaroni and cheese. (more information in the "About" Link on the left.)

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