Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The H.Y.P.E. Project: The Conclusion!

If you have been sticking around for a while, you may or may not have noticed I've been working on the H.Y.P.E. Project, a self-assigned reading project dedicated to hyped up YA novels of the past two years, since June 2011. Ten books, nine months, and a short lists of statistics of my results that I would like to show the world.

Total number of books read: 10
  • Number of books that lived up to their hype: 4.5 (Unearthly by Cynthia Hand, Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick (bad kind of hype), Halo by Alexandra Adornetto (again, the bad kind of hype), Die for Me by Amy Plum (this is the one-half because it did kind of live up it), Across the Universe by Beth Revis)
  • Number of books that did not live up to their hype: 5.5 (Nightshade by Andrea Cremer, Matched by Ally Condie, Divergent by Veronica Roth, Die for Me by Amy Plum (didn't live up to it in certain ways), Delirium by Lauren Oliver, Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini)
If you want to see my reviews for the books, you can check the "h.y.p.e. project" tag attached to this post or check the link above, where I included more links to the reviews. Now for a few unorthodox stats I'm including just because I can:

Number of series the project had me read the first book of: 10
  • Number of series I have continued/will continue: 1
  • Number of series where the idea of continuing on makes me want to cry: 9
Number of books I will be seeing in my nightmares: 4 (One of them has already been there and given me a great idea. Half-angel warrior with a necklace made of demon teeth!)

Amount of time wasted: None, in a sense. I've gotten something out of all the books, even if my only gains from a particular book might be headaches and the desire never to write such a horrible book.

Will I ever do a second H.Y.P.E. Project? I doubt it. If I have the chance to read a book people are talking about and interested in it at all on its own merit, I will read it. If what I've heard about it has kept me away from it (like with Nightshade, Matched, Halo, and Delirium, which I happily avoided until I decided they qualified), I'll stay away from it like I've stayed away from The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. There is huge reader and blogger hype behind it, but I know it won't go over well with me.

Thanks for sticking around and dealing with me, everyone! I am so, so happy to be finished with this.