Finnikin of the Rock

Title: Finnikin of the Rock
Author: Melina Marchetta
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review Summary: It has all the elements a great epic fantasy should have without feeling cliched and the characters are impressively well developed.

Ten years ago the entire royal family of Lumatere was slain and the kingdom fell under a curse. Surrounded by an impenetrable magic barrier, half of her people remain trapped inside with an evil king and half wander the land outside as exiles. On the outside, Finnikin and his guardian Sir Topher have struggled to find a home for the Lumateren exiles, but when they meet an exile named Evanjalin who claims the heir to the throne is alive, they have to consider the possibility that they have a hope of returning home.

Hour 20 – Let’s Get Social!

Congrats to the winner of a $10 Amazon Giftcard, Kai at Fiction State of Mind!

It’s hour 20!  We made it! Well, actually, I’m scheduling this in advance, so you and the minions definitely made it. I might be asleep by now! Either way, welcome to the hour 20 Let’s Get Social challenge 🙂 Here’s what we’re going to be doing…

Bloggiesta Starting Line!

You guys! Today is the first day of bloggiesta and I’m so excited to get started! I don’t think I’ll get much done today since there’s work during the day and I’m having friends over tonight, but this weekend I’m going to get os much done. I do wish I’d been able to host a challenge but for some reason I wasn’t following The Bloggiesta blog (which you should definitely do!), but next time I will and it will be epic 🙂 Here’s my current to-do list which I’ll update here as I go. Wish me luck and go have lots of fun with Bloggiesta!

To Do

• get caught up on cross-listing posts to Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Cannonball Read V
• work on re-categorizing posts
• participate in Saturday and Sunday twitter chats
• do at least six mini-challenges
• write reviews for the six books I’ve read but not reviewed

Bookish Blogging Events

The Monster Reviewathon
Aug 26th-Sept 1st 
I only found out about The Monster Reviewathon today, but I think it’s exactly what I needed! I’ve been ahead on reading and behind on writing a review for a while, a problem that the recent read-a-thon only increased. So for the next week, I will have to keep reading for some scheduled reviews coming up, but I’m going to try to do a lot of catching up on reviews. (Goal: review 10 books).

Bout of Books Check-Up

This week I’m participating in the Bout of Books read-a-thon. My goal is to read more than usual, mostly by eliminating the TV watching I do. I’m also actually looking forward to a 4.5 hour bus ride I’m taking into NYC this weekend (and the 4.5 hours back!) as a prefect time to fit in some extra reading. In the meantime, I’ll be up-dating this post every day with my the amount of reading I managed to fit in the day before. I hope everyone else participating is having a lot of fun and making great progress on their goals 🙂

More Great Book Blogging Events

You guys! I love all the great book blogging events that people are awesome enough to host. Here are some exciting ones that are going on now or happening soon…