What is Flashback Friday you ask? Â
I know… I know… As if you don’t have a million and one memes to follow! BUT we’re hoping that you might want to participate in just one more! Â
If you’re like us, you read a lot… you add a ton to your ‘to be read’ lists and you sometimes forget about some amazing things because they get pushed down either your favorites list or that pile of books you need to read. Â That doesn’t mean those books are no less amazing!
This is a way for us to highlight books that are older that maybe don’t get as much recognition now because they have been out for a while. Â Books that we read and loved or books that have been on our To Be Read lists for ages, but we just haven’t gotten around to them yet. Â
On to the details – Pick a book… any book that meets the following criteria: Â
1. Â Must have been published at least 2 years ago orÂ
2. Â Preferably is still in print or available to read
Grab our button or make your own then simply feature it on your blog… See the example below, and then come back here and link us up!! AND Spread the word!!
Jaime’s Pick
HEX HALL
Series: Hex Hall – Complete
HEX HALL
Series: Hex Hall – Complete
By: Rachel Hawkins
Publication Date: January 1, 2010
I loved everything about this series…Â Think mean girls but for witches, warlocks, faeries, and shapeshifters… Add one vamp and some daemons and you have Hecate Hall or Hex Hall as the students call it. Â Sophie is sassy and snarky, and Archer is… Archer LOLÂ
If you haven’t read this series, I highly recommend it. It’s complete and there is a spinoff, School Spirits, that is just as wonderfully done! Â If you pick these up, let me know what you think!!Â
Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It’s gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie’s estranged father–an elusive European warlock–only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it’s her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters.
By the end of her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire student on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect.
As a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all: an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.
ABOUT RACHEL
Rachel Hawkins was born in Virginia and raised in Alabama. This means she uses words like “y’all” and “fixin'” a lot, and considers anything under 60 degrees to be borderline Arctic. Before deciding to write books about kissing and fire (and sometimes kissing while on fire), Rachel taught high school English for 3 years, and is still capable of teaching you The Canterbury Tales if you’re into that kind of thing.Â
She is married to a geologist, which means that they have incredibly strange dinner conversations (“So today at work, I wrote a chapter where killer fog, like, ATE PEOPLE.” “Huh. Well, I was chased by an angry reindeer while trying to map parts of Norway.” “Um…okay.”)Â
Rachel also has a little boy whose main hobbies are playing video games, running around in circles, and plotting his Future Intergalactic Take-Over.
She is married to a geologist, which means that they have incredibly strange dinner conversations (“So today at work, I wrote a chapter where killer fog, like, ATE PEOPLE.” “Huh. Well, I was chased by an angry reindeer while trying to map parts of Norway.” “Um…okay.”)Â
Rachel also has a little boy whose main hobbies are playing video games, running around in circles, and plotting his Future Intergalactic Take-Over.
When not writing books, Rachel enjoys reading, travelling, and knitting (very terribly.)
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Erin’s Pick
The Girl of Fire and Thorns
The Girl of Fire and Thorns
Series: Fire and Thorns – Complete
By: Rae Carson
Publication Date: September 20, 2011
This series is what I love about books. Â With made up worlds and creatures, Rae Carson just pulled me into Elisa’s story and I went through all the ups and downs right alongside her. Â The Elisa that we are introduced to in book one is very different from the one in book three and I love when I can see the growth in characters. Â Â I also love when an author isn’t afraid to do what they want with their characters and Carson definitely takes this story where she feels it needs to go. Â
If you like high fantasy, definitely check this one out – since it is finished, you can read all three books at once without the anxiety I had to go through wondering what was going to happen next!
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This series is what I love about books. Â With made up worlds and creatures, Rae Carson just pulled me into Elisa’s story and I went through all the ups and downs right alongside her. Â The Elisa that we are introduced to in book one is very different from the one in book three and I love when I can see the growth in characters. Â Â I also love when an author isn’t afraid to do what they want with their characters and Carson definitely takes this story where she feels it needs to go. Â
If you like high fantasy, definitely check this one out – since it is finished, you can read all three books at once without the anxiety I had to go through wondering what was going to happen next!
Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.
Elisa is the chosen one.
But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can’t see how she ever will.
Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.
And he’s not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people’s savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.
Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.
Most of the chosen do.
About Rae
I write books about teens who must do brave things. I’m originally from California, but I moved to Ohio to marry my husband, who is the smartest and therefore sexiest man I know. We live in Columbus with my teenaged stepsons, who are awesome. My books tend to contain lots of adventure, a little magic and romance, and smart girls who make (mostly) smart choices. I especially love to write about questions I don’t know the answers to.
   Cosmo’s Pick
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
Series: Harry Potter – Complete
By: J.K. Rowling
Publication Date: January 1, 1997
J. K. Rowling also writes as Robert Galbraith.
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If you know me, you know I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. Well, the movies. What you probably don’t know is that I’d never read the books. Oh, I owned them because I mean, well, they’re a cultural phenomenon. And also they looked really awesome on my bookshelf. However, I never took the time to read them because… To be honest, I have no good excuse.Â
That all changed at the beginning of this year. Reading all of the Harry Potter books is one of my personal reading goals for 2014. I finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone a couple weeks ago. And let me just say…it lived up to the hype. It’s a kid’s book, but OMG, I found myself lost inside this amazing world that J.K. Rowling created. And I love, love, love her voice. And even though I’ve seen the movies more times that I care to admit, I found that I adored the book, and everything felt brand new.
Harry Potter has never played a sport while flying on a broomstick. He’s never worn a Cloak of Invisibility, befriended a giant, or helped hatch a dragon. All Harry knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley. Harry’s room is a tiny cupboard under the stairs, and he hasn’t had a birthday party in ten years.
But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to a wonderful place he never dreamed existed. There he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic around every corner, but a great destiny that’s been waiting for him… if Harry can survive the encounter.
About J.K.
J. K. Rowling also writes as Robert Galbraith.Although she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potterbook was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, “No one ever called me ‘Joanne’ when I was young, unless they were angry.” Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murraywhen conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King’s Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother’s maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother’s paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.
Rowling’s sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael’s Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael’s, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potterheadmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: “I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee.” At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said “taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind,” gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling’s heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, “I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life.” She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, “Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Pottercharacter] is loosely based on me. She’s a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I’m not particularly proud of.” Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as “not exceptional” but “one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English.” Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.
   What did you pick this week? Link us up!!
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