Libby's Lit

Welcome to another installment of “Libby finds another excuse to shove her recommendations down your throat!” This week’s thinly-veiled attempt to make people read my favorite books comes in the form of Hogwarts House Recommendations! I have chosen four books, each of which I think emulate a particular Hogwarts house: Gryffindor , Ravenclaw, Slytherin , and Hufflepuff . These are books that I think a member of that house would enjoy, perhaps because the main character would be in that house or maybe the general aesthetic of book feels very attuned to that house. Hopefully, you pick up a new book soon and see yourself in it more than you would have otherwise. You can also click on any of the titles and it will take you to the Goodreads page for that book.  Starting with Harry Potter’s own house…*sorting hat voice* GRYFFINDOR ! For Gryffindor, I have chosen book with a main character who is the epitome of what members of the Gryffindor house value: bravery, loyalty, reckles...

The Greek gods are real, and they’re ruining Percy Jackson’s life. As a son of Poseidon, Percy has newly discovered powers he can’t control, monsters on his trail, and he is on an epic quest to find Zeus’s lightning bolt and prevent a war between the gods. Normal is a myth when you’re a demigod. Based on the best-selling Disney-Hyperion novel by Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical is an action-packed theatrical adventure that will rock your world - and the underworld. In case you didn’t know, the first book in the Percy Jackson series, The Lightning Thief, has been adapted into a musical! It opened off-Broadway in New York on Thursday, March 23rd. This hilarious rock and roll adventure is an incredibly faithful adaptation that fans of the book and newcomers alike are bound to love! I was so incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to see this masterpiece on opening night. I just so happened to be spending my spring break in NYC, and I was staying a...

Trope (noun): a recurring theme or motif.  This is the first in a series of posts I'm going to do entitled "Book Tropes" where I discuss my favorite and least favorite tropes from books. I’ll talk about what they are, why I love/hate them, and recommend some books that contain the tropes. Hopefully by the end of this, we’ll have ourselves our own little Book Trope Dictionary! Today I will be discussing one of my absolute favorite tropes which I’ve coined “The Crew” (you’ll see why later). “The Crew” occurs when a book pulls together a diverse cast of unlikely heroes who (mostly) equally share the weight of “main character”. The best way to identify a crew is to ask yourself “Who is the main character?” If you have more than one answer, most likely, you’ve found yourself a crew. Crew books often have more than one narrator or an omniscient narrator.  Crew books are some of my favorite books to read. There’s usually multiple s...

Tis the season for the annual book awards! In honor of the end of 2016 (good riddance), I am going to be counting down the top 16 books I read this year. All the excerpts are taken from GoodReads, and books that are part of a series have the excerpts of the first book included. This year was an amazing year for me books-wise, so it was incredibly difficult to rank these books. They were all truly stunning and amazing books. It took me forever to come up with this ranking, and I'm still not entirely happy with the order because I really couldn't decide! I loved all of them and there are so many more I loved that didn't make it onto the list.   Without further ado, let's put up our dukes and get down to it! 16 . Me Before You by Jojo Moyes "Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Un...