Thursday, June 30, 2016

Recently Read: Emma: A Modern Retelling

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Genre: Contemporary/ Retelling
Status: Part of the Jane Austen Project
Publication Date: 2014
Page Count: 361
Rating: 2.5

Add on Goodreads

You May also Like:
Emma by Jane Austen Review
Recently Watched: Emma Mini-Series



This is the first book in the Austen Project that I have read. I figured this was the best one to start with because Emma is my favorite Austen I have read so far. These books have been receiving mixed reviews and I can understand why. Austen is such a beloved author and a genius that it would be such a difficult task to tackle her characters and satisfy die-hard fans.

I thought this book was just alright. It is no where near the original but I wasn't expecting it to be. I thought McCall Smith did a great job at channeling Austen's wit and humor in the character of Mr. Woodhouse, Emma's father, and his obnoxious anxieties but other elements were just off. There is so much unnecessary information in this novel. The backstory of some of the most minor characters goes on for three pages and there are random tangents about heavy topics such as imperialism and the gender of God sprinkled in that just left me a little puzzled. 

I liked the modernization of setting and most of the characters, Mr. Knightly was nicely done but I had some problems with Emma herself. The original Emma is quite unlikable for most of the novel, but she does have some redeeming qualities that encourage you to root for her despite her self-centered nature and naivety. This Emma however, did not have any redeeming qualities and was just unlikable. I also thought the pacing was a little odd as it is less than a hundred pages before the end when we meet Mr. Frank Churchill in person and Emma and Mr. Knightly have had only one or two conversations at this point in the novel. Their love felt random and I never would have bought it if I had not read the original and knew they were destined for one another. 

This was not a bad book, it was fine to read in the sun on the beach or by the pool, but it was nothing extraordinary and did not live up the the original. If you like Austen or adult contemporaries I would say it's worth a try. I have recently acquired Trollepe's Sense and Sensibility from The Austen Project and will be reading it sometime soon. Let me know your thoughts on this book or others in this series if you have read them.

Now I'm craving a reread of the original Emma but may have to satisfy myself with a rewatch of the BBC mini-series linked above.       

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: Eight Places on the Internet that I Love (and I think you will too)

I'm sure this won't surprise many of you, but I spend a lot of time on the internet, so for today's freebie I thought I would highlight some of my favorite internet places. 
Hosted by: Broke and Bookish

Naturally, I have linked you to all the sites so you
can join me in wasting time in various internet places.

I spend way too long on Book Outlet browsing the cheap books.

I have been a subscriber of this subscription box for about five months and I absolutely love it! I love the quality of the products, their uniqueness, and that they help provide independence for women and families all over the world. I highly recommend checking them out. Pretty much everything on their site is on my wishlist.

This site has thousands of designs by thousands of artists that you can put on a t-shirt, sweatshirt, pillow, phone case, coffee mug, your wall, etc. It's great for fandom items and I love browsing all of the literature and book related items. I have purchased quite a few t-shirts, sweatshirts, and stickers from this site and love browsing.

This is another site with awesome book gear, but this site specializes in classics. I have three t-shirts from their site and love them. 

I don't usually shop the books at B&N but I love their classic movie selection and always snatch up a few when they do their big movie sale twice a year. Their DVD and Blu-Ray selection is HUGE, if you are looking for it, they have it!

I follow Book Riot on Facebook and they are constantly writing interesting articles and making lists of book that suck me in. I have found a lot of new book recommendations through their lists.  

7.  Modcloth
I spend a lot of time looking at the apartment section of this site. All of their items are vintage inspired and so cute! They have everything from clothes to books, and I can spend way too much time browsing around. (Totally got sucked into their sale section while making this post.)

8. Enrou
My newest discovery/obsession is this site which I got suggested because of Globe In. This is a site that works to end poverty in a similar way as Globe In. The products are beautiful, hand-made, and support an amazing cause. I am loving finding sites that are making a difference in the world, and by supporting them I can too. It's such an easy way to spread some positivty and help women and families around the world. You can even shop by which cause you want to support on the site.  

Where's your favorite place to waste time on the internet? 

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Poetry Spotlight (8): Walt Whitman


In my second year of college I took an Introduction to Poetry class and I fell in love with reading poetry. Before then, poetry was always a little intimidating and a medium that I didn't have much experience with. But after that class, I became addicted to reading poetry, and during the class I actually found myself thinking in and expressing myself in poetry- which I never would have guessed would happen in a million years. So, with this series I'm here to share some of my favorite poems in a way that I'm sure will turn out rambley and unorganized.

See my collection of other Poetry Spotlight posts here

Today I'm going to be talking about the brilliant but intimidating Walt Whitman. I have read a few of his quite extensive list of works and really loved what I have read. His longer and most famous works are intimidating and I believe humanly impossible to completely comprehend at a literal level and a literary level, but they are a great reading experiences. So first a quick bio. on Whitman, then a look at a few shorter poems and the two longest poems.


Whitman is a very interesting man that was years before his time. He was born in 1819 and died in 1892, is often considered the father of free verse, and is one of the most influential people in the American literature canon. He was a humanist (someone who places a high value on human beings both individually and collectively and prefers critical thinking and evidence to superstitions or faiths) and served as a transitional writer between the Transcendentalists and Realists. His works were very controversial upon publication particularly because of their sexual nature. What's interesting about the sexuality of Whitman's works is that they defy gender expectations, norms, and heterosexuality norms which is very impression for a white man writing in the mid 1800s. Whitman was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War and wrote many poems, prose, and letters about the war. 

Whitman also wrote in free verse, and although he was not the first to do so, he was the first to popularize the form and gain critical and public recognition for his works in free verse. Whitman believed in a symbiotic relationship between the poet and the reader, and discussed sex and sexuality openly in his works. It is commonly accepted by biographers and literary critics that Whitman was either homosexual or bisexual in orientation, but there is no proof that he had physical relations with any men, only speculation. Interestingly, Whitman never discussed his own sexuality even though his poems were full of sexual imagery.    


Here are Whitman's most famous works, and a few of my favorites. I have not read all of Leaves of Grass, but I included some information on it because it is so crucial. As always, I have linked you to the poems whenever possible through the poem titles. 

Leaves of Grass:
Leaves of Grass is a novel length  collection of poems in free verse that Whitman published with his own money in 1855 and edited and revised until his death. Numerous editions of this work exist because he was revising and re-releasing so often. The first edition contained twelve poems and the last collection released before Whitman's death contained four hundred poems. If you have read John Green's Paper Towns, then you will be familiar with lines from this collection as Margo is a big fan of Whitman. 

Each of the poems are slightly connected by themes of nature and the celebration of humanity. The collection expresses Whitman's philosophies on life. In this collection you can see the Transcendentalist ideas that inspired Whitman as he celebrates nature and humanity's connection to and role in nature. This collection of course also contains those controversial sensual themes and images that I mentioned earlier and celebrates the human body, mind, and spirit. 

This collection contains many of Whitman's popular poems including "I Sing the Body Electric," his eulogy to President Lincoln titled, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Song of Myself" which I will speak more about below.  
Keep in mind that are multiple versions of this poem because of Whitman's many revisions. 
"Song of Myself" is a fifty two stanza poem that would take a lifetime to fully comprehend and analyze and I don't think it is meant to be fully comprehended. This poems presents images of man and nature, man and woman, and man and man in connection with one another. I would use the adjective psychedelic to describe this poem even though that concept would not become popular for over a century from the date of this poem's first publication. The poem is spiritual and something you have to experience for yourself. It is theorized that Whitman had some fancy out-of-body experience/epiphany with a specific name that I can't remember before he wrote this poem, and I would totally believe that.     

Now for two individual and short poems by Whitman that I love. 
For me this poem represents just what I love about great poetry. I first read this poem as a sophomore in college in my poetry class. I read it and went "Huh, okay, well don't really get that one" and moved on. I came across it a year or so later in another class and thought it was absolutely brilliant upon rereading. Poetry really is a personal and new experience each time you encounter it. 

I love the extended metaphor Whitman creates between the spider on an island and a lonely soul. The images in the last stanza of the soul throwing its webs until it catches hold on something are very poetic and yet accurate.  
I love this poem for its comments on education and learning. The difference between learning about stars in the classroom and looking up while outside and seeing the actual stars is very vast. As a future educator, this poem means a lot to me and it is something I try to keep in mind in regards to plans for my classroom and myself as well as a student.


Any poetry suggestions for me? What should my next Poetry Spotlight feature?

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Recently Read: Memoirs of a Beaknik (Or what happens when a woman writes about sex)

Author: Diane di Prima
Genre: Classic/Memoir (kinda)
Publication Date: 1968
Page Count: 194
Rating: 3/5

Add on Goodreads

More about the Beats:
Literary Look: The Beatnik Movement
On the Road by Jack Kerouac Review 
The Beats: Graphic Novel Review




Buckle you seat-belts, it's going to be a wild ride of sexism and bohemianism. 

If you are unaware, Diane di Prima is a poet who wrote during the Beatnik movement in America. For more information on the movement you can read my Literary Look linked above, but it took place during the late 50s to early 60s. The Beats are comparable to modern day hipsters, expect they did a lot of drugs and couch surfing. They were the ultimate bohemians and wrote about their real experiences, many were drug induced, and their real lives. Their works may be embellished or slightly changed, but most of them are based on true stories and true people. This movement was famously dominated by men and it was very hard for women to gain any popularity or critical respect in the movement. di Prima was one of the few women to do this, and is often recognized as the leading female poet of the Beat era. 

The Beats are pretty controversial; you either love them or hate them. I love them, but I can understand why people hate them.They do a lot of drugs and creating and not much else, but I find them endlessly fascinating because of their lack of care or worry. If you are not a fan of the Beat movement and all that rejection of society and responsibility, you will not enjoy this one. Just like most works from this movement, this book contains an ungodly amount of drugs, sex, and carelessness. 

First of all, it is important to understand that this is not di Prima's real memoir. That came in the form of recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years published years later in 2001. This is the edition of her memoirs that her publisher thought would sell best. di Prima was asked to put as much sex as possible in the book and that's just what she did. In the afterword of the book di Prima states, 
"Gobs of words would go off to New York whenever the rent was due, and come back with “MORE SEX” scrawled across the top page in Maurice’s inimitable hand, and I would dream up odd angles of bodies or weird combinations of humans and cram them in and send it off again. Sometimes I’d wander the house looking for folks to check things out with: “Lie down,” I’d say, “I want to see if this is possible.”" 
 I know a lot of people are not aware of this, but as I was reading the reviews of this book on Goodreads I couldn't help but notice something strange that happens when women write about sex. If you know anything about the Beats, you will know that the "founders" (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassidy) had sex with everyone, including each other. They write about this in all of their works, the number of women Kerouac has sex with in On the Road is over ten at the least, but no one bats an eye. Not many would label On the Road as pornographic but you bet your last dollar they labeled di Primas's novel pornographic and question its literary value.

Women write about fictional sex in numerous romance novels and make billions of dollars, but once it is suggested that the sex is not fictional but the real experience of the author (which the word memoir does in this case) forget about it, this isn't literature, it's obscene.

Did di Prima have sex with every human she met? No. Did her male editor disregard the value of her true experience of being a woman writer in an all-male literary scene and latch on to the suggestive scenes as a way to provide entertainment and make money off of a woman's story? Probably.  

I'm really glad that I read this before di Prima's real memoir, as this was such a thought provoking read. I'm really excited to read her real memoir to get a better sense of what her experience in the movement was like. Reading classics can be very frustrating at times because women were so often excluded or pushed under the rug, but it is so rewarding to experience and examine women's experiences through the angle of literature, and the story of this novel's publication says so much more about the experience of di Prima in the literary scene than the words inside her novel. The way that we view this novel and the frankness with which di Prima writes about her sexuality and sexual encounters continues to provide a lens through which we can view the double standards and expectations we place on women vs. men when it comes to sexuality.

Read some of di Prima's poetry here.


Saturday, June 18, 2016

Weekly Wrap-Up: Undecided Reader

What's New:
I'm having some trouble deciding what to read next because I have a huge pile of books I want to read this summer and I know I won't have time to get to all of them. For now I am just picking up books until I can find one that pulls me in enough to get me to commit.

Reading Update:
Since my last wrap-up I have finished The Raven King (review below) which I really enjoyed. I thought it was a really solid conclusion to the series, but I'm so sad to see this series end. I also read Diane di Prima's Memoirs of a Beatnik which I have lots to say about. This is such an interesting look at the sexism in the movement and the literary world in general just with the history of why it was written the way it was. I know a lot of people hate the Beats, but I find them really interesting and quite brilliant.
What I Bought:



What I Posted:
Last week:
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain Review

This week:
The Raven King by Maggie Stefviater Review
TTT: Anticipated Releases for the Second Half of 2016
On My TBR... (5)

My Last Wrap-Up

Stacking the Shelves Hosted by: tyngasreviews.com
The Sunday Post Hosted by: caffeinatedbookreviewer.com

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, June 16, 2016

On my TBR... (5)

Back today with another look into what's on my physical TBR. Let me know what I should read right away!


On my TBR I have a book that is...

A re-telling
Haven't even hauled this one yet!

Receiving Mixed Reviews

Part of a series I really need to catch up on

Different from what I would normally read

A Reread

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: New Release 2016 (Part 2)

As usual, I'm totally behind in the new release department, so I haven't even read half of the new releases from the first half of the year yet! But, here I am today with ten more 2016 releases that I want to read.
You can see my first list of 2016 releases I want to read here.
Hosted by: The Broke and the Bookish


1. The Muse by Jessie Burton
Release Date: July 16, 2016
I just bought Burton's debut the other day, and I can't wait to get into it. I already know I will love The Miniaturist and will be wanting this one too. Also very interested in the crossing timelines and art world mentioned in the premise!  


2. A World Without You by Beth Revis
Release Date: July 19th
I have yet to read anything by Revis, but all of her books intrigue me! This one is about time travel and superpowers.

3.  A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Release Date: September 6, 2016
The Rules of Civility is one of my all-time favorite books and I have been eagerly waiting for Towels to come out with his second book! Regardless of premise, I was going to be picking this up automatically.

4. Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake
Release Date: September 20, 2016
Love the sound of triplet teen queens. Also love that cover.



5. Bright Smoke, Cold Fire by Rosamund Hodge
Release Date: September 27, 2016
I'm a sucker for Romeo and Juliet retellings and I liked Hodge's dark twist on Beauty and the Beast in Cruel Beauty so I think she will do R&J justice.

6.The Good People by Hannah Kent
Release Date:October 2016
The premise of this one sounds so interesting. 1825 Ireland mixed with magical realism in the form of changelings! I haven't read Kent's first novel, but I really want to and this one sounds great too.



7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Illustrated Edition 
Release Date: October 4, 2016
AHHHHH!!!!!!

8. The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

Release Date: 2016
Crossing my fingers that this book where women can "manipulate beauty" has some feminist themes!

9. Black Widow: Red Vengeance
Release Date: 2016
I thought book one (Review here) was a lot of fun, so I'm looking forward to book two. I'm all about that female super hero action.

10. Captain Marvel Novel by Shannon and Dale Hale
Release Date: 2016
See! I told you, female super heroes.

What made your list? No way I need more books on my TBR, but we all know that's not going to stop me.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Recently Read: The Raven King

Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy
Publication Date: 2016
Page Cont: 432
Rating: 5/5

Add on Goodreads

Also by Maggie Stiefvater:
The Raven Boys Review
The Dream Thieves Review

The first half of this review will be spoiler free.  The second half may contain 
spoilers but will be hidden. I will let you know when this switch happens and make sure to be 
careful while reading comments just in case!

I read Blue Lilly, Lilly Blue and The Raven King back-to-back and I'm sad that I am now finished with this series, but I am pretty satisfied with the ending. I decided not to do a review of book three because I found I didn't have much to say. I found it to be my least favorite of the series. There wasn't a lot of character development or development in the relationships between the characters which I was kinda bummed by, but even though it was my least favorite, it still earned a solid 4/5 because I was sucked in and loved the atmosphere as usual. The characters are what makes this series so great, and I was hoping for some specific developments in book three that didn't happen, but book four was back on track with the character development!

If you haven't started this series yet, please do! It's so addicting and enthralling; just make sure to have all the books on hand so you can marathon! I thought this was a great conclusion. It had a great mix of action and emotion and I already want to reread the series. I think this is a series that will improve upon rereading because there are so many clues and foreshadows worked into the earlier books that I wouldn't have caught the first time. And can we all agree that the real star of this show is Ronan? <3 Gansey who??

Spoilers below: highlight to reveal

OMG finally! I have been waiting for Ronan and Adam to acknowledge their feelings for one another. And shout out to Adam for being attracted to girls and boys and not making an internal crisis about it. He just accepted it without questioning himself and acted on it. I really respected the way that Stievfater built intimacy in Ronan and Adam's scenes in subtle ways. There was no large make-out scene but you felt the intimacy and the spark when they were together. This did wonders to make the romance REAL and not typical YA fiction romance. 

I knew that beloved Gansey was not really going to die, but I was really hoping that the ending woudn't be hokey or a cop-out. I was decently satisfied with how the end went down, but I also feel like it might have better if Gansey actually died or something bigger had happened. I don't know, I would love to reread so I could solidify my thoughts on the ending. I would love to hear yours below, just make sure you mark your spoilers. I also found Henry's role in the novel and the end particularly to be a little random and weird. What did you guys think?


Have you guys read anything else by Stiefvater? I want to read The Scorpio Races for sure, but I have heard mixed things about Shiver and the following books. What did you guys think of them and how do they compare to The Raven Boys? It might be hard to read that series after TRB because from what I can gather, this one is much better and came later in Stievfater's writing career. I love her writing though, so I would be up for reading anything she writes, regardless of plot. 

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Recently Read: Circling the Sun

Author: Paula McLain
Genre: Adult/Historical Fiction
Publication Date: 2015
Page Count: 366
Rating: 4/5

Add on Goodreads 

Beryl Markham was the first female pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic from east to west in 1932. She also spent most of her life living in Kenya and trained prize winning horses. She defied gender expectations and got herself in a lot of trouble because of it. She was unlucky in love and passionate throughout her life, and McLain captures it all in this fiction retelling of her childhood to young adult life.

So when I reviewed The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, I did a five reasons to read format and I thought it worked really well, and I think that format will work really well for this novel as well. So here are five reasons you should read Circling the Sun

1. Beryl Markham is a real and accomplished woman. I picked up this book because I had read McLain's The Paris Wife about Hemingway's first wife Hadley and loved it. I knew it had something to do with the movie Out of Africa which I had never seen but that was it. I had never heard of Beryl before, and I'm so glad that this novel introduced me to her. She was a courageous and accomplished woman that deserves her spot in history. I plan on watching the movie soon, but since the movie follows another female character in the book, I'm not sure if Beryl will be portrayed in a positive light (Beryl appears as Felicity in the movie). Beryl trained prize winning race horses, taking after her father, and lived most of her life in Kenya. She then took up flying and was the first female (and human in general) to cross the Atlantic solo from east to west. 



2. McLain does an excellent job of bringing real people of the past to life. In both of McLain's novels, the characters feel so real. You forget that this is just a fictionalized account of these lives and not the real character herself narrating for you. McLain's characters are accurate (as far as I'm aware) and complicated. She does an excellent job of picking women from history with amazing stories to tell, and telling them in a way that sucks you in and consumes you. 

3. The African backdrop is beautifully created. After finishing this book I wanted to read every novel set in Africa I could get my hands on. The backdrop of early 1900's Africa was beautiful and complicated. The beautiful scenery clashed with the trouble of colonization and modernization in a really interesting way.  

4. This is the other side of the story in Out of Africa. While I have not seen this one yet (I plan on watching it soon though now that I have read this!) I know a lot of people love this book/movie. The movie centers around Karen Blixen the author of Out of Africa and Karen Blixen plays a large role in this novel. I am happy that I read this before seeing the movie, and I would love to read Out of Africa before seeing the movie to get the full experience of all of the characters.

5. You follow Beryl from childhood to mid-adult years and get to see so much character development and growth. While I did feel that some of the parts of Beryl's life were skimmed over or rushed, I loved seeing her growth and motivations. She was real, her relationships were real, and the respect I feel for her is real.  

Markham also wrote her own account of her life titled West with the Night which I am interested in picking up now. The reviews of this that I have seen have all been positive, and I would love to hear her story in her own words as it is quite a remarkable story. I highly recommend both of McLain's novel that I have read; she is an auto-buy author for me. 

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Weekly Wrap-Up: Busy Weekend

What's New:
This weekend is super busy. I'm writing this from my apartment; my summer class meets on campus tomorrow for one day since it's a mostly online class. This means I had to drive up to my campus apartment which is two hours away, and I will be driving back the same day the class meets. Then the next day, my younger brother graduates from high school. It does not seem like he is old enough to move out and go to college!

Reading Update:
This week I finished Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater and of course jumped right into The Raven King. I am hoping to finish it this week and I would love to read two books this week. We'll see how that goes though.

New Books:
Library Sale
I picked this classic up because it was at my library sale for two dollars and it's one I have been wanting to pick up for a while. It's a romantic thriller I do believe, let me know if you've read and enjoyed it.
This is a fictional account of Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of my all-time favorite poems. I haven't read anything by Robuck, but her other two novels featuring real literary figures as fictional characters have gotten a lot of praise so I think she will do Millay justice.

This one was super popular a while ago and I'm glad I found a cheap copy of it. It's a thriller and translated fiction.

Library 
I have this one out on loan as an ebook from my library. From what I have heard, this is a reimagining of Jane Eyre where the main character really enjoys the novel Jane Eyre and she murders people/ wants to murder people? Don't really know. I will link you to the vague but mysterious Goodreads synopsis.  

Catch Up on Posts:
Monday-Recently Read: Robin Archive vol. 1
Tuesday-Top Ten Tuesday: Poolside Reads
Thursday-The Intimidating TBR Tag!

Last Week's Wrap-Up

What's Next: 
I have a review for Paula McLain's Circling the Sun planned, and hopefully I can get some of my draft posts that I have been meaning to type up for months now out of the draft pile into the post pile.

Stacking the Shelves Hosted by: http://tyngasreviews.com/
The Sunday Post Hosted by: http://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/

What did you read this week?

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Intimidating TBR Tag!

This tag has been floating around on both Booktube and blogs and I have been meaning to get to it for a while and today's the day! I'm going to be picking from books that I already own for this tag. I have quite a few unread books on my shelves, some of them have been unread for quite a while.

1. A book you have not finished

I started De Profundis a couple of years ago when I first bought it, but put it down for some reason and haven't picked it back up. I love Wilde and have every intention of reading this soon. I loved the letters and poetry in this Penguin volume I have read so far, and the bits of the title work too. 

2. A book you haven't had the time to read

Queen of Shadows came out in the second week of my fall semester last year so I had zero time to read it when it first came out and its huge size has kept me from picking it up in the mean time. Hopefully I will be getting to it this summer. 

3. A book you haven't read because it's a sequel
I read The Diviners when it first came out and have forgotten everything that has happened in the two plus years we have had to wait for the sequel. I can't talk myself into committing to rereading book one and then jumping into book two since they are both ginormous so I'm not sure when I will get to this one. 

4. A book you haven't read because it's brand new

Just bought a copy of Possession at my library's book sale at the beginning of this week.  

5. A book by an author you read a book from previously and didn't enjoy 
I read and loved Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, but HATED The Grapes of Wrath so I'm leary to pick up more by him since all of his books have that Depression era Western American setting. This one is much shorter than The Grapes of Wrath so it's got that going for it at least. 

6. A book you haven't been in the mood to read
I liked Tess of the D'urbervilles but Hardy is such a slow paced read. I might listen to this one on audio book soon, but I have not been in the mood to trudge through another Hardy lately. 

7. A book you haven't read because it's enormous
I really want to pick this one up because it sounds great and has of course won the Man Booker, but it's 850 pages.

8. A book you bought because of the cover and then heard less than favorable reviews for
I bought this one based on the cover and the fact that it was a Peter Pan inspired retelling. It's not that I have heard bad things about it, I just haven't really heard anything about it at all. 

9. The most intimidating book on your TBR

Both of these books are super intimidating because of their size and complicated, involved plots, but I really want to read both. Maybe after school ends next year I will work on tackling some of my heftier reads. 

If you want to do this tag, feel free! Just make sure to leave me a link to your post in the comments. 

What's the most intimidating book on your TBR? Does length or involved plot intimidate you more?