Top 5 Wednesday REWIND: Authors You'd Want to Write Like

This month our Top 5 Wednesday topics are Rewind topics. This means that instead of having new prompts for every Wednesday, we get to choose any of the topics from previous months and make those our topics for the month of May. The first topic I chose is "Authors You'd Want to Write Like".

Authors:

• My first pick is Leigh Bardugo. She has a very atmospheric writing style and is a master at setting a gritty vibe that carries consistently through her books (you can see this in her Six of Crows duology). She is definitely an author I look to for 'setting' inspiration as I aspire to create the kinds of settings she manages to achieve. 

• Adam Silvera is my second choice. I've only read one of his books, History Is All You Left Me, but it blew me away how invested I was in the character's lives after reading about them in just one book. I felt for them as if they were real people that not only existed but that I knew personally. I would love to be able to convey strong emotions in my writing as well as he does. 

• For my third author, I have Jack Ketchum. Ketchum is a really great author to read if you're looking for books that have topics or themes that are difficult to read or make the reader very uncomfortable, an example of this being his novella, I'm Not Sam. He handles taboo subjects so well and I hope that any writing I do that handles topics like that would be written as well as his. 

• Fourth is Cassandra Clare. Of course, I had to mention CC, how could I not? Her more recent books, such as her Dark Artifices trilogy, have been so completely realized and so well written IMO. She manages to cram so much into her novels without it feeling like the aspects of the novel were crammed into it. Everything from world building to politics to relationships (whether those be romantic, platonic, or familial) are combined seamlessly. My hope is that my writing would be so well put together that it blended as smoothly as hers does. 

• Vladimir Nabokov is my final pick. Lolita is one of my all-time favorite novels. For me, it is a perfect example of what beautiful writing looks like. Though Nabokov's native language is Russian, Lolita was originally written in English, which I think shows what a strong grasp he had on the English language. If Nabokov can write so beautifully in a language that is not native to him, then my goal as a writer would be to obtain, and write with, the same level of understanding of English as he has.

✿ Those are my Top 5 Wednesday picks for today. If you did a T5W post, link it below, I'd love to check it out, or you can subscribe to BookSass. Thanks for reading!

April Wrap Up

April was a pretty intense month for me. I participated in Camp NaNo with a goal of 33,000 words (which I got really close to, but ultimately failed at. No surprise there), I've been prepping for a move, one of my dogs had a health scare, and I participated in a couple readathons. Somehow in all this though, I still managed to read a total of 10 books.

WRAP UP:

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondō
My Rating: ★★★★

I listened to this on audiobook which I think was the perfect format for me to consume this. I would recommend reading a physical copy if you want to take notes though. I didn't agree with every aspect of the author's decluttering philosophy, but there was plenty of good advice in this. Reading this has left me very inspired to purge my book collection using this method, so we'll see how that goes. I will be doing a post on that soon, so when it is available, it will be linked here.

Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi

My Rating: ★★★

Full review here. This was an okay story, but it wasn't anything special. I wanted to love this so much, so it's pretty disappointing that it wasn't what I was hoping it would be. The plot was generic, and all but the main character felt 2-dimensional. This is the author's debut novel, so maybe these issues will improve in the future, but for me, this was kind of a letdown.

Nasty Women Edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay & Kate Harding 

My Rating: ★★★★★

This is a very powerful essay collection, which is a genre I've really been feeling lately for some reason. I loved every essay in this. There were, of course, some that stood out more than others, but every single one gave me something to think about, quotes to highlight, and some piece of wisdom to take away from it. I read this as a borrowed ebook, but I plan to get a physical copy so I can annotate this and fully review it essay by essay.

Top 5 Wednesday: Favorite Fandom Items

Today's Top 5 Wednesday Topic: Favorite Fandom Items. These can be items you own or items that you want. I personally don't buy or own very many fandom items, so these weren't exactly easy to come up with, but I think I found some good ones.

1. This item is one that I want so bad and it is Louise Belcher's pink bunny ears hat. I think the ears are so cute and Bob's Burgers is one of my favorite animated shows.

2. The 'One Ring' from the Lord of the Rings series. I actually own a replica of this already on a neck chain and it's one of my favorite pieces of jewelry.

3. This isn't really an item, but it's another thing I've been really wanting to get. I want to get a Shadowhunter rune tattoo. I'm not sure yet what rune I want to get, I just don't want it to be the angelic rune, at least not the first one. I plan to get several, but I'm still looking for the right one to start with and where to actually put it.

4. Of course, Harry Potter has to be mentioned. There are so many fan items from this world that I would love to have, but I'll mention my most wanted and probably the easiest to find, and that would be a house sweater. I freaking love sweaters, and I have so few, none of which are HP related. I have been on the lookout for so long for a Slytherin house sweater that looks comfortable and well made. If you have any idea where I might be able to find one, please comment and let me know.

5. My last favorite fandom item is one that I already own, and that is my Lip Gallagher t-shirt. If you didn't know, there is a really great show called Shameless and on the show, one of the characters, Lip, has a white t-shirt in one episode with black text reading "Fuck you, you fucking fuck." And I own that same shirt. I don't really wear it out in public (for obvious reasons) but I love it.

✿ I hope you enjoyed this post! If you did, please feel free to subscribe to BookSass. If you did a Top 5 Wednesday post as well for this topic, comment the link below and I'll be sure to check it out. 

Review: Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi

Title: Down and Across
Author: Arvin Ahmadi
Publication Date: February 6, 2018 (Viking Books)
Format: Ebook - 330pgs
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Page

Summary: 
Scott Ferdowsi has a track record of quitting. Writing the Great American Novel? Three chapters. His summer internship? One week. His best friends know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives, but Scott can hardly commit to a breakfast cereal, let alone a passion.

With college applications looming, Scott's parents pressure him to get serious and settle on a career path like engineering or medicine. Desperate for help, he sneaks off to Washington, DC, to seek guidance from a famous professor who specializes in grit, the psychology of success.

He never expects an adventure to unfold out of what was supposed to be a one-day visit. But that's what Scott gets when he meets Fiora Buchanan, a ballsy college student whose life ambition is to write crossword puzzles. When the bicycle she lends him gets Scott into a high-speed chase, he knows he's in for the ride of his life. Soon, Scott finds himself sneaking into bars, attempting to pick up girls at the National Zoo, and even giving the crossword thing a try--all while opening his eyes to fundamental truths about who he is and who he wants to be.

Top 5 Wednesday: Ideal Mash Ups

Today Ideal Mashups is the Top 5 Wednesday topic. Ideal mashups are mashups we would want to see, similar to when book synopses say something along the lines of "For fans of _____ and ______." This topic took me foooorever to come up with, but I finally thought of some I liked.

1. The 100 (TV Show) and Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare. I really love the idea of The 100's post-apocalyptic world and I think it would be interesting to see some kind of paranormal group (like Shadowhunters) in a dystopian setting as paranormal dystopian isn't something I've ever seen happen before in a book. I would also love to see more badass female characters like Emma and Clarke.

2. This one is an ideal musical mashup - Deftones and Godsmack. Nothing would make me happier than to find a band that has the same sound as Deftones with a voice that's soft and eerie like Chino's, but that can also growl like Sully and has the same lyrical genius as Godsmack.

3. The shows - DeathNote (anime) and Riverdale. I think it would make for a very interesting story to have something with a dark kind of power like a death note fall into a town that is already creepy and has a subtle paranormal vibe like Riverdale. Imagine what that kind of power would do to a character like Betty who, although outwardly perfect, has a dark side. And every small town story has that perfect Betty character.

4. GTAV and Left4Dead. I love how interactive GTAV is and I love the storyline and world of Left4Dead. I want to see a zombie game with a world as big and developed as the one in GTAV. Instead of only being able to explore the areas that will advance you in the game, having the ability to move freely around an entire map and interact with other survivors, maybe forming alliances/communities would be really cool.

5. This mashup is a song/author combination. Avenged Sevenfold's song Nightmare and the author, Stephen King. I think the song lyrics could inspire a really creepy, old-timey mental asylum set story. An author like Stephen King who can write creepy and weird fiction well would do a great job, in my opinion, of bringing a story like that to life.

✿ I hope you enjoyed this post! If you did, please feel free to subscribe to BookSass. If you did a Top 5 Wednesday post as well for this topic, comment the link below and I'll be sure to check it out.