TGIF (2): Book Blogger Influences

I'm back with another TGIF post! This is a feature hosted weekly by greadsbooks.com.

This week's question:

Book Blogger Influences: Has there been a particular book blogger who's influenced what you read? Share with us a review/book blog that convinced you to pick up a certain book.

I don't think I have any book blogger influences in terms of what I read, to be exact: I don't read book reviews before buying/reading books. I know it sounds silly considering I write book reviews myself, but I prefer to read book reviews after reading a book in order to see if other people's opinions match my own. Think what you want, but I like to read books without having someone else's thoughts and opinions clouding my judgement!

On the other hand, I recently came across a blog that I absolutely fell in love with: Parajunkee's View! I absolutely love the blog owner Rachel - she's so down to earth and lovely. I had somewhat of a book blogger's life crises last week where I couldn't help but question if I really wanted to be a book blogger or not. But then I read a "Book Blogging 101" blog post and realised I wasn't alone in what I was going through and what I was thinking. I have since read all of the series to date and though I don't really look at her book reviews, I love reading her posts! I guess you could say I was influenced enough to keep at book blogging, without the fear of losing myself.

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TGIF (1): Book Series Finales

TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) is a blog hop hosted by greadsbooks.com. Every week a question is posed for bloggers to answer. I think it's an awesome idea to keep my blogging regularly, so I've decided to try to answer these as often as possible!

Note: This post has some spoilers!

This week's question:

Book Series Finales: Which book, from any series has been your favorite ending? What about your least favorite ending?

I'm such a picky reader that I'm finding it difficult to think of a single book I enjoyed the ending of. I tend to hate endings because they never satisfy me so even thinking of a least favourite will be difficult! Haha.

Favourite Ending:

I haven't actually finished many series' but of the ones I can remember not hating the ending of I'd say L. J. Smith's The Secret Circle Trilogy and The Vampire Diaries (the original books that came out in the 90s, I haven't read the additional ones/the books by Ghost writers, I'm also not a fan of either show) have to be at the top. I read the books back in high school around 7 years ago so I don't have that much to say about them. I did become an obsessed fan to the extent of late night fanfiction and roleplaying!

Least Favourite Ending:

The most recent unsatisfactory book series ending for me is a slightly easier question which I can actually elaborate on! It has to be Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins; I read it in February so the bitter taste of discontent hasn't left yet. I was planning to do a whole post on this (which may still happen if I ever decide to read the series again) but here's one of my reasons:

Katniss' behaviour towards Gale and Peeta continuously irritated me throughout the series. I was never a huge Katniss fan and frankly started to hate her at the end of the first book (the train scene!!). Slowly as the books progressed I found it more and more difficult to enjoy reading about Katniss because at no point was I happy to root for her without Peeta.  Peeta, on the other hand, had my heart from the moment Katniss described the scene with the bread. The fact that Katniss repeatedly broke Peeta's heart throughout the series made me develop a slow burning fire of hatred for her. I don't hate Katniss for being confused, I hate Katniss for being selfish in love. She told Peeta she couldn't return his feelings for her, yet spent nights sleeping in his arms. I will admit, I didn't hate Gale but Katniss prevented me from loving him as much as I could have. By the last book, I wasn't unhappy that Peeta loathed her (although, I would have been happier if he had got to that stage naturally rather than through torture). Katniss spent the entire three books "confused" and unable to decide between the two boys - effectively playing with both hearts. Then at the last minute, when things went wrong with her setup she just ended up with Peeta whilst pretending it was her own decision.

Ha this became more of a rant than anything else. Sorry about that, on a more positive note: happy weekend!

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