Denise's Reading Blog: March 2022

Monday, March 21, 2022

Monthly Book Contests Wins!

Desiree Holt sent me more stuff I just didn't take a picture of it. She gave me three books in total, but I donated two of them to free little libraries.

Friday, March 18, 2022

Review: City of Fallen Angels

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments Book 4) by Cassandra Clare-Notes & Highlights

The following list is from a school assignment I did on this book.

1. The book is about sixteen-year-old Clary Fray, who comes back to N.Y. She is training to be a Shadowhunter and how to use her special power. But someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her—his mother just found out that he’s a vampire, and now he’s homeless.

2. Supernatural

3. Character: Jace Lightwood Herondale is the best Shadowhunter of his time, currently residing in the N.Y. Institute. Raised by Valentine Morgenstern, Jace was revealed to be the biological son of the late Céline and Stephen Herondale. He is currently in a relationship with Clary Fray.

- Action: Due to the Angel Raziel's blood in their veins, all Shadowhunters are all able to apply runes on their skin without any real danger.

- Character: Alec Lightwood is a Shadowhunter and is the older brother of Isabelle and Max, as well as adoptive brother of Jace Lightwood Herondale.

- Action: Being Nephilim, Alec possesses a variety of enhanced physical and mental abilities granted to him by the blood of Raziel in his veins and also by the angelic Marks of the Gray Book.

4. I am on Chapter 9 and I am really enjoying it so far because of all these plot twists and dramatic scenes.

5. When I am done with the book I would recommend it because it is an action packed book with relatable characters you will fall in love with.

This is a picture of my desk when I was ready to start reading this book again. I got Starbies just for the vibe. Everything is ready! XP
I got this book from Goodwill ($1.99).

So I bought this used copy from Goodwill and I was so excited to see a Shadowhunter novel out in the wild so I snatched it up quick without looking inside, but I should have. To my horror, there was book vandalism inside! 😱 Who would do such a thing to a literature masterpiece?! This saddened me when I first looked through my used copy. Luckily it was only in the first few pages of the book and the rest is fine. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning that I have photographed.

This is the absolute worst!!! Although I understand the doodles of people because Clary does that a lot in The Shadowhunter’s Codex, this is just unacceptable! There is no need for paint inside a book!

Reading The Mortal Instruments is like being wrapped in a warm blanket. It brings me comfort.

“She made an impatient noise. ‘By the Angel, you don’t know anything about your kind, do you? Do you even really know how vampires are made?”

‘Well, when a mommy vampire and a daddy vampire love each other very much…’” (8).

lol! XD

“Many New York restaurants had garden terraces; few were open this late into the year. This one was in a courtyard between several buildings. The walls had been painted with trompe l’oeil murals showing Italian gardens full of flowers” (17).

trompe l’oeil = optical illusion, here is an example

“...the buzz and hum of the city” (24).

“HERE ARE ENSHRINED THE LONGING OF GREAT HEARTS AND NOBLE THINGS THAT TOWER ABOVE THE TIDE, THE MAGIC WORD THAT WINGED WONDER STARTS, THE GARNERED WISDOM THAT HAS NEVER DIED.

The words were engraved over the front doors of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. Simon was sitting on the front steps, looking up at the facade. Inscriptions glittered against the stone in dull gilt, each word flashing into momentary life when caught by the headlights of passing cars.

The library had always been one of his favorite places when he was a kid. There was a separate children’s entrance around the side, and he had met Clary there every Saturday for years. They would pick up a stack of books and head for the Botanical Garden next door, where they could read for hours, sprawled in the grass, the sound of traffic a constant dull thrumming in the distance” (68-69).

“‘You’ll see me tomorrow. You promised to come to that dress fitting with me, remember?’

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I must really love you.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I love you, too.’

Simon clicked off the phone and lay back, holding it against his chest. It was funny, he thought. Now he could say ‘I love you’ to Clary, when for years he’d struggled to say those words and had not been able to get them out of his mouth. Now that he no longer meant them the same way, it was easy.

Sometimes he did wonder what would have happened if there had never been a Jace Wayland. If Clary had never found out she was a Shadowhunter. But he pushed the thought away—pointless, don’t go down that road. You couldn’t change the past. You could only go forward. Not that he had any idea what forward entailed. He couldn’t stay in Eric’s garage forever. Even in his current mood, he had to admit it was a miserable place to stay. He wasn’t cold—he no longer felt either cold or heat in any real way—but the floor was hard, and he was having trouble sleeping. He wished he could dull his senses. The loud noise of traffic outside was keeping him from resting, as was the unpleasant stench of gasoline. But it was the gnawing worry about what to do next that was the worst” (86-87).

I could use this for a continuation of my fanfic with Alec and Jace called Forever? (MALEC & JALEC).

“He fished it out of his pocket and looked at the screen” (94).

SO MUCH FISHING IN THESE BOOKS!! 🐟

“Jocelyn’s eyes widened when she saw Clary. ‘Honey, you look gorgeous!’

‘Yeah, you have to say that. You’re my mother,’ Clary said, but she grinned anyway. ‘Hey, is that coffee black by any chance?’

‘Yep. Consider it a sorry-we’re-late gift,’ Luke said, handing her the cup. ‘We got held up. Some catering issue or other’” (97).

🖤 ☕️ Maybe this is why I only drink black coffee ;)

“‘Coming!’ Clary called, bolting down the last of her coffee. ‘Uh-oh. Sounds like a dress emergency.’

‘Well, good luck with that.’ Maia got to her feet, and dropped the DS back in Simon’s lap before bending to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m meeting some friends at the Hunter’s Moon.’

She smelled pleasantly of vanilla. Under that, as always, Simon could smell the salt scent of blood, mixed with a sharp, lemony tang that was peculiar to werewolves. Every Downworlder’s blood smelled different—faeries smelled like dead flowers, warlocks like burnt matches, and other vampires like metal.

Clary had once asked him what Shadowhunters smelled like.

‘Sunlight,’ he’d said” (99).

Awwww I love this! We get to know what Downworlders and Shadowhunters smell like through Simon.

“Clary shook her head at Simon. ‘You’re on thin ice, Lewis.’ With which pronouncement she flounced away, holding up her silk skirts as she went. Simon was amused to note that underneath them she was wearing green sneakers.

‘Clearly,’ said Luke, ‘something is going on that I don't know about.’

Simon looked over at him. ‘Sometimes I think that's the motto of my life’” (100).

lol I was amused too, Simon. That is so Clary! XD :P

“Simon set his own on the table and stared out the window. There was a gym across the street, and he could see people through the plate glass that fronted it, running on treadmills, arms pumping, headphones clamped to their ears. All that running and getting nowhere, he thought. Story of my life” (105).

“The Alto Bar was your typical hipster dive, located partially under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass in Greenpoint. But it had an all-ages night every Saturday, and Eric was friends with the owner, so they let Simon’s band play pretty much any Saturday they wanted, despite the fact that they kept changing their name and couldn’t be counted on to draw a crowd. Kyle and the other band members were already onstage, setting up their equipment and doing final checks. They were going to run through one of their old sets, with Kyle on vocals; he learned lyrics fast, and they were feeling pretty confident.

…

Millennium Lint was already onstage, the guys whaling away on their instruments, and Kyle, at the front, growling sexily into a microphone. Clary felt a moment of satisfaction. It was largely down to her influence that they’d hired Kyle at all, and he was clearly doing them proud” (169 & 176).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yup6LaW2GY

I was looking back at Balkans’ live performances and I saw this one with the bassist with glasses and he reminded me of this scene and of Simon.

I also thought of this scene from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I think the bass in this clip works well with Simon too.

It says that he was holding a guitar, so I assume that he is on bass because I confirmed it on the Shadowhunters fandom wiki. Since there are four original members (including Simon), Jordan would have been the fifth band member, front-man singer.

Simon Lewis, bassist (former)
Eric Hillchurch, drummer
Kirk Duplesse, singer/rhythm guitar
Matt Charlton, lead guitar
Jordan Kyle, singer

I think Balkans’ sound perfectly matches how I think their music would sound because of how youthful and energetic the music is. The guys from Balkans looked so young when they started their band, out of high school they say.

https://shadowhunters.fandom.com/wiki/Simon%27s_band

(more information about Simon’s band)

“‘I didn't mean to,’ Simon said again, wretchedly. It seemed to be all he said these days” (190).

“Part Two

For Every

Life

Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for.

For every profit in one thing, payment in some

other thing. For every life, a death. Even your music, of

which we have heard so much, that had to be paid for.

Your wife was the payment for your music. Hell is now

satisfied.

—Ted Hughes, ‘The Tiger’s Bones’” (197).

“‘I wouldn’t have done it. I would have spit on him and taken whatever punishment they wanted to hand out. I hated myself that much. But when he explained that I’d be able to help other people like me, maybe stop what had happened to me and Maia from happening again, it was like I saw a light in the darkness, way off in the future. Like maybe it was a chance to fix what I'd done’” (207).

“‘That’s Kadir,’ said Jace. ‘You probably met his brother. Malik. He died in the attack on Valentine’s ship. Kadir’s the second most important person in the Conclave, after my mom. She relies on him a lot’” (233).

Awww, I love that Jace calls Mayrse his mom *blushes & cries*

“‘Well, you know they were both in the Circle. But I bet you didn’t know it was all my mom’s idea. My dad was never really enthusiastic about Valentine or any of it. And then when everything happened, and they got banished, and they realized they’d practically wrecked their lives, I think he blamed her. But they already had Alec and were going to have me, so he stayed, even though I think he kind of wanted to leave. And then, when Alec was about nine, he found someone else.’

‘Whoa,’ Simon said. ‘Your dad cheated on your mom? That’s—that’s awful.’

‘She told me,’ said Isabelle. ‘I was about thirteen. She told me that he would have left her but they found out she was pregnant with Max, so they stayed together and he broke it off with the other woman. My mom didn’t tell me who she was. She just told me that you couldn’t really trust men. And she told me not to tell anyone.’

‘And did you? Tell anyone?’

‘Not until now,’ Isabelle said.

Simon thought of a younger Isabelle, keeping the secret, never telling anyone, hiding it from her brothers. Knowing things about their family that they would never know. ‘She shouldn’t have asked you to do that,’ he said, suddenly angry. ‘That wasn’t fair.’

‘Maybe,’ said Isabelle. ‘I thought it made me special. I didn’t think about how it might have changed me. But I watch my brothers give their hearts away and I think, Don’t you know better? Hearts are breakable. And I think even when you heal, you’re never what you were before.’

‘Maybe you’re better,’ said Simon. ‘I know I’m better.’

‘You mean Clary,’ said Isabelle. ‘Because she broke your heart’” (238-239).

“He was sitting on the bed, wearing his gear, as if he had just come from a fight, and his hair was tousled, the dim light from the window illuminating shadows under his eyes, the hollows of his temples, the bones of his cheeks. In this light he had the extreme and almost unreal beauty of a Modigliani painting, all elongated planes and angles” (241).

“His eyes always darkened when they kissed, as if desire changed their color in some fundamental way. He touched the white star mark on her shoulder, the one they both had, that marked them as the children of those who had had contact with angels. ‘I know I’ve been acting strange lately,’ he said. ‘But it’s not you. I love you. That never changes’” (243).

“Magnus watched him go with sad eyes. Not a human sort of sad, Simon thought. His eyes seemed to contain the sadness of great ages, as if the sharp edges of human sadness had been worn down to something softer by the passing of years, the way sea water wore away the sharp edges of glass” (253).

“Jace, kneeling, gazed up at Zachariah, who looked down at him with his blind, impassive expression. Clary could not help but think of medieval paintings of saints on their knees, gazing upward, their faces suffused with shining golden light. Would that I had been here, he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle, when you were growing up. I would have seen the truth in your face, Jace Lightwood, and known who you were.

Jace looked puzzled but didn’t move to pull away.

Zachariah turned to the others. We cannot and should not harm the boy. Old ties exist between the Herondales and the Brothers. We owe him help” (270).

Unlike Jace, I understood what Brother Zachariah (formerly known as, Jem Carstairs) meant. Jace is one of Will Herondale’s descendants. Will was Jem’s parabatai and he owes him his life, his everything.

“...he could feel the pull of the nights, the desire to be out under the dark sky and the glimmering stars. There was something in him that wanted to live in shadows…” (273).

“Someone had carved the letters JG into the stone just above the bedstead, leaving him to wonder what that was about” (275).

I wonder what JG stands for too, Jace.

“Magnus still had his head in his hands, the black spikes of his hair sticking out between his fingers. ‘I just don’t see,’ he said to no one in particular, ‘why the past has to matter.’

To Simon’s surprise it was Jordan who answered. ‘The past always matters,’ he said. ‘That’s what they tell you when you join the Praetor. You can’t forget the things you did in the past, or you’ll never learn from them’” (295-296).

“‘You look really frightened.’ He wasn’t sure why he’d said it exactly, or what he was hoping she’d say back. She bit her lip, the way she always did when she was nervous. Her gaze for a moment was far away; it was a look familiar to Simon. One of the things he’d always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic. Once he had been able to do the same, had been able to inhabit imaginary worlds all the more exciting for being safe—for being fictional. Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal. He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn’t realize was precious until you lost it” (297).

“Isabelle, standing in the doorway of Simon’s bedroom, looked silently at the place he’d been sleeping for the past few days. It was so empty—just four walls, naked of any decoration, a bare floor with a futon mattress on it and a white blanket folded at the foot, and a single window that looked out onto Avenue B. She could hear the city—the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the quiet of Idris terribly alien without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now, standing here looking at Simon’s small room, she thought about how lonely those noises sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here looking up at the ceiling, alone” (324).

“Maia looked away, blinking rapidly. Jordan, lowering his hands, said, “Not really. We were just about to go through his wallet.” He picked it up from where Maia had dropped it. “Here.” He tossed it to Isabelle.

She caught it and flicked it open. School pass, New York state non-driver’s ID, a guitar pick tucked into the space that was supposed to hold credit cards. A ten-dollar bill and a receipt for dice. Something else caught her eye—a business card, shoved carelessly behind a photo of Simon and Clary, the kind of picture you might take in a cheap drugstore photo booth. They were both smiling.

Isabelle took out the card and stared at it. It had a swirling, almost abstract design of a floating guitar against clouds. Below that was a name.

Satrina Kendal. Band Promoter. Below that was a telephone number, and an Upper East Side address. Isabelle frowned. Something, a memory, tugged at the back of her mind.

Isabelle held the card up toward Jordan and Maia, who were busy not looking at each other. “What do you think of this?”

Before they could respond the apartment door opened, and Alec strode in. He was scowling. “Have you found anything? I’ve been standing down there for thirty minutes, and nothing even remotely threatening has come by. Unless you count the NYU student who threw up on the front steps.”

“Here,” Isabelle said, handing the card over to her brother. “Look at this. Does anything strike you as odd?”

“You mean besides the fact that no band promoter could possibly be interested in Lewis’s sucky band?” Alec inquired, taking the card between two long fingers. Lines appeared between his eyes. “Satrina?”

“Does that name mean something to you?” Maia asked. Her eyes were still red, but her voice was steady.

“Satrina is one of the seventeen names of Lilith, the mother of all demons. She is why warlocks are called Lilith’s children,” said Alec. “Because she mothered demons, and they in turn brought forth the race of warlocks.”

“And you have all seventeen names committed to memory?” Jordan sounded dubious.

Alec gave him a cold look. “Who are you again?”

“Oh, shut up, Alec,” Isabelle said, in the tone she only ever took with her brother. “Look, not all of us have your memory for boring facts. I don’t suppose you recall the other names of Lilith?”

With a superior look Alec rattled them off, “Satrina, Lilith, Ita, Kali, Batna, Talto—” (327-328).

I love how Simon has a small picture of Clary and him in his wallet. That was so cute!

And of course Alec would know all about Lillith because his boyfriend is a warlock!

OMG! XD lol That made me laugh, Alec! XDXD He’s all like, “uh, …, bitch, who da fuk you is?” to Jordan XD

When the word Talto was mentioned I couldn’t help but be reminded of Anne Rice’s Taltos.

“She looked toward Clary, and Simon’s gaze followed hers.

Clary. She was so pale that she looked almost blue, though perhaps that was the cold. Her green eyes were vast in her pale face. A trickle of drying blood spilled from her collarbone to the neckline of her dress, now spotted with red. Her hands hung at her sides, loose, but they were shaking.

Simon saw her as she was, but also as she had been when she was seven years old, skinny arms and freckles and those blue plastic barrettes she’d worn in her hair until she was eleven. He thought of the first time he’d noticed she had a real girl’s shape under the baggy T-shirt and jeans she always wore, and how he hadn’t been sure if he should look or look away. He thought of her laugh and her quick pencil moving across a page, leaving intricately designed images behind: spired castles, running horses, brightly colored characters she’d made up in her head. You can walk to school by yourself, her mother had said, but only if Simon goes with you. He thought of her hand in his when they crossed the street, and his own sense of the awesome task that he had undertaken: the responsibility for her safety.

He had been in love with her once, and maybe some part of him always would be, because she had been his first. But that wasn’t what mattered now. She was Clary; she was part of him; she always had been and would be forever” (349).

I love Clary and Simon’s friendship so much! <3

“Maia’s eyes were dark with sadness” (353).

“She paused as she opened the door, and looked back at him, but he was only a shadow, backlit by the glow of the New York skyline” (410).

“‘Luke,’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s possible to do something so bad, even if you didn’t mean to do it, that you can never come back from it? That no one can forgive you?’

Luke looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he said, ‘Think of someone you love, Simon. Really love. Is there anything they could ever do that would mean you would stop loving them?’” (417).

“Simon, and so you pride yourself on being a normal human boy, but you’re still what you are. Just like I am. The more you try to crush your true nature, the more it will control you. Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop” (419).

I love Luke! He is the perfect father figure.

“...his bedroom… It was his private space, his sanctuary. But he wanted Clary there. He wanted her to see him, the reality of him, not the image he showed the world. …to see her as no one else saw her: vulnerable and asleep. To see her and to be seen” (BONUS STORY! Jace and Clary’s first kiss through Jace’s eyes. When Midnight Comes).

CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS BY CASSANDRA CLARE: booktalk with XTINEMAY (ep 20)

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Review: Turned

Turned by Morgan Rice
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Audiobook: 5h 27m

View all my reviews

Turned (Book #1 in the Vampire Journals) by Morgan Rice

This is a picture of my eAudiobook copy of the book that I own.

I first came across this book when I was browsing for anything free on the Google Play Books Store. I saw this audiobook cover and saw that it involved vampires, so I added it to my library. I didn’t really expect to listen to it. It was more of like a “whatever” audiobook option for me. I think I’ve had it in my Google Play Books Library for a long while now.

Then there was such a slow hump at work that they were giving out VTO (Voluntary Time Off) like crazy! I didn’t take it last week on Thursday and Friday (3/10/22). I think it was Thursday when I started to listen with my earbuds on the order picker. At first, they had me on the stupid dock then we all got transferred to doing some safety jobs. I went for the bin etiquette thing where we just go around fixing bins. They had to give us these three pieces of paper and we had to fill out which bins we fixed. I liked that a lot because I could stay in one aisle until a picker or ICQA came in and I had to leave or go to break. And the bonus plus was that I was not tracked by all my scans. I hate that so much. I have never used my Sony earbuds on the PIT before then because it was actually dangerous, but now that there were less people, we could do that in secret because they couldn’t see our every move. I didn’t like coming in when I could have taken VTO, so I had to make myself feel better. I thought to myself before when I worked at PHX6 and I would listen to podcasts while I foot-picked and got caught. I would laugh sometimes and since the VNAs where so quiet, I couldn’t listen to Congratulations the podcast. Then I started to think about the Google Play Books app I downloaded and started to listen to this scary audiobook by Nightfire and I was too scared to listen to more. Then I looked around the app to see what else I had downloaded and saw “Turned”. I gave it a try because I wanted to listen to a story while I did mindless “work”. The book was five hours and twenty-seven minutes long, so I thought that I could finish it in one shift because I have ten hour shifts. I liked how the narrator captured the main character’s age in her voice. It says that it compares to Twilight and the Vampire Diaries, both of which I am aware of. It was obvious because Morgan (I am going to call the author by her first name because she does not compare to Anne Rice even in the slightest) mentioned that the main character, Caitlin, was eighteen years old and just your average, ordinary girl, which is Bella from Twilight. I don’t know much about the Vampire Diaries because I haven’t seen a full episode, but my Mom and little sister watched it all of the time and from what I saw I can see how it compares. But definitely the name alone, the Vampire Journals. I think it's called that because Caitlin had a journal she took everywhere with her and maybe there was some vampire stuff in there that she didn't know she had. LOL I was thinking, "I like journals! I'll read this to see what's up." XD The gore of the blood and violence does compare to the Vampire Diaries. Even the girl on the cover looks like the main brown girl on the Vampire Diaries.

I did not like this (audio)book very much.