hooked on books – Cynthia D. Griffin

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Guest Post: The Importance of Reading For Education

Posted on September 24, 2021 by Cynthia D. Griffin

By Linda Mills

Reading is one of the most vital habits and hobbies a parent can cultivate in their child, or a person of any age can take up, because reading develops the minds and opens up new avenues that are important in the pursuit of education. Reading about any subject is an indispensable resource that cannot be replaced by any other medium even in today’s technologically advanced era.

Reading Better Leads To Speaking Better

Self-expression is a vital tool for every human being, giving individuals the power to express themselves clearly with better vocabulary as well as enabling them to have an impact. The more someone reads, the more they are able to shape and express their opinion, which is vital for critical thinking and for educational purposes. Reading widely also means various sources of information can be triangulated and compared with each other, which again lends itself to effective speaking and articulation.

Widen The Scope

Reading widens the scope of a person’s mind. Readers are able to empathize with others who may be completely different from them, and they are able to experience different cultures. One of the main objectives of education is to widen the scope of one’s mind and teach a person about the world in general including history, philosophy, and science without being restricted to the area one is born in or the culture one belongs to. Reading also makes individuals more creative and imaginative as reading uses many different neuron networks in the brain, which no other stimuli including visual can command. No wonder reading makes people smarter!

Read Actively Not Passively

Passive reading means you read the words, but don’t pay extra attention to them or employ critical thinking to ascertain the various meanings of the text. For educational purposes, critical thinking is very important because it encourages asking questions, seeking multiple sources of information, and seeking a greater understanding of context. Active reading is better reading, because it allows for greater retention and benefit for students.

Reading And Comprehension

Comprehension of the written texts is very important for educational purposes and the most basic way is when someone––student or otherwise––can answer questions after reading any text. This sort of fluency and concentration also affects a student’s ability to write effectively because they are more able to retain information, express their opinions after evaluation, and write it all down.

Many techniques help with comprehension especially for younger readers, such as the following:

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Series Review: Star Scavenger By G J Ogden

Posted on June 23, 2021June 23, 2021 by Cynthia D. Griffin

A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge and get Kindle Unlimited for awhile. Up to this point, I’ve been buying all the books I’ve read to help support authors, but I also realized this was limiting me on how many books I could read, and I wanted to really step up my reading so I could dive into whole series and still stay on a budget. Once I signed up for Kindle Unlimited, I found I had an abundance of stories (and series) at my finger tips. I felt like a kid in a candy shop.

One of the first series I started reading with my new membership was Star Scavenger by G.J. Ogden. This series got my attention because I was looking for something science fiction with space travel. The best part is that it was a completed series (it sucks having to wait on books!) of five books, so I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed.

The five books in this series are Guardian Outcast, Orion Rises, Goliath Emerges, Union’s End, The Last Revocator (and yes, as of writing this post, all of them are available on Kindle Unlimited).

Guardian Outcast starts the story out with a middle-aged spaceship pilot Hudson Powell whose looking for a purpose to believe in. He thinks that’s signing up with the RGF, a force that polices the mysterious alien ships wrecks that are left abandoned throughout the galaxy, but he quickly realizes he’s just joined the biggest corrupt organization in human civilization. What does he do when he finds himself in a morale and life threatening situation?

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Book Review: Obsidian Eyes by A.W. Exley

Posted on March 29, 2021March 29, 2021 by Cynthia D. Griffin

Obsidian Eyes Book One in the Queen’s Blade Series by A.W. Exley is available in kindle and paperback.

Last Friday, I had a desire to find a book the had a strong female character, was sexy, and a little bit weird. So I decided to try one of A.W. Exley’s books. I read her Artifact Hunters series last year, and absolutely loved it, so I wanted to see if another one of her series could deliver again. It did, at least so far with the first book Obsidian Eyes.

Set just before the Victorian Age, Allie Donovan is a seventeen-year-old who is full of secrets as she attends an aristocratic school, a place she really has no business being since she’s a commoner. But her grandfather’s position as the school’s librarian gives her a way into the exclusive St. Mathew’s Academy.

Once there, Allie makes some friends and enemies as well, and also meets a young man that infuriates her as well as captivates her at the same time. But she is cautious of him, because he’s supposed to be the enemy. Allie tries to find a way to walk between her world of a commoner and guild member, and the elite gentry of England and Scotland, but it’s full of potential disasters, including her biggest secret, the man who put Allie in the exclusive school to begin with and why.

This story is full of wit, friendship, estrangement, intense action, subterfuge, political conspiracies, and steampunk brilliance. It also has a hint of the exotic as it explores some of Allie’s ties to an Egyptian harem.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. It was a little slow reading at first. Exley develops a very rich and complex background for her Heroine Allie. So I think it was a little bit of a struggle to put all the pieces together because some of the background information Exley sprinkles into the story seems a contradiction. But as the story progresses, Exley brilliantly weaves the pieces together for a very colorful and interesting past for Allie. After I hit the halfway point, I couldn’t even put the book down, and ended up finishing the book in the early hours of the morning.

So if you are looking for a book full of weird and wonderful steampunk inventions, an intense forbidden romance, and a story you simply can’t put down, try out Obsidian Eye’s.

The Queen’s Blade has two other books in the series Opaque Lies and Oubliette Lost, which I very much look forward to reading next.

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Book Series Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children By Ranson Riggs

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Cynthia D. Griffin

I started reading this series after I watched the movie in theaters back in 2016. The movie peaked my interest enough to start reading the books, and I’m so glad, because I really enjoyed the first three books (Home For Peculiar Children, Hollow City, and Library of Souls). Though, I thought that was the end of the series, because the way book three ended, it seemed like a good place to stop things.

A few years later, I was browsing in a library, and was tickled pink when I stumbled across book 4: A Map Of Days. I grabbed it off the shelf and eagerly went home to to read it. And the way book 4 ended, I knew 5 was in the works, because it left the story on a pretty huge cliffhanger. So I waited patiently for Conference of the Birds, which of course was as fantastic as the other books. And then yesterday, I finally finished the series reading book 6: The Desolations of Devil’s Acre.

I have to say there isn’t any feeling quite like the one being hooked on a good series. The anticipation of what will happen next, and the excitement of knowing some of your favorite characters are coming back to dish up a great read. So when I finished Devil’s Acre, I was a little sad that the series was done. But also completely satisfied, because Riggs delivered a very good wrap up for his six book series (man, I love it when that happens!).

Ransom Riggs dished up a fun, exciting, and darkly twisted story that delighted and left me in shocked horror more than once. The best part was the absolute weirdness of his world. Some of the stuff he came up with was absolutely impossible, but he made it believable for his story, and that, I think, was his crowning achievement. He took weird (peculiar) and made it cool, fun, and causing me wish I was a little peculiar too.

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Guest Post By Phoebe Ritter: How I Became An Empowered Writer

Posted on February 27, 2020 by Cynthia D. Griffin

Writing the Daughter of the Zel trilogy was hugely empowering for me. I’d always enjoyed writing and dreamt of having something published, but I never had the confidence to put my work out there.

Then, a few years ago, I was having a rather tough time personally, which led me to quit my job and move back home. Even with everything going on, I found myself with a load of free time I hadn’t ever had before.

As a distraction, I set myself the challenge of writing a novel in a month. I’d always wanted to do NaNoWriMo, but November was never convenient. Every day after work I’d sit down and type until my brain ran out of scenes. The rapid progress towards a final word count slowed towards the end, and I had to go back and carefully stitch together key scenes to make a complete story.

I had an idea for where the book was going and every time I wrote it felt like clearing space in my head. Making this mental room meant I’d get an idea for a new scene, usually when I was trying to get to sleep.

Now, like then, in the early days of a story, I get these rather annoying moments where I’m unable to go to sleep because of new phrases, places, people that pop into my head. There’s a process I’ve learned to follow by turning the bedside light on, writing the thought down in my notebook, and turning the light off again before immediately having another thought and repeating it. Eventually my brain lets me sleep.

I have found that the first draft is always shocking. I’ve come to terms with that. One of my betas recently said how she’d love to write a novel, but was worried it’d be awful. I explained the number of drafts my work passes through before she even sees a beta version. I hope this encourages her to get something down on paper. That’s the hardest bit.

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